but she doesn’t want to hear the answer to that question

Too sweet, the ingredients. Too high the heat. From this ladder leaning
against a cloud, I see the future—that luminous egg of the mouse and her
lover the Wild White Bird.

Look what has hatched between them!

Deep time passes. Affection. Family. Herd animals and garden plants. And
that woman balancing an exaggeration made of glass on her head. She’s
muttering something she overheard a girl once say to a steering wheel:

If you were so in love, why did you leave?

But she doesn’t want to hear the answer to that question when the guy
beside her opens his mouth to speak. Trust me.

Still, she grows older, and continues to believe. The gentle runners disap-
pear behind the sun. War rolls down the side of the Mountain of Grief so
peacefully.

And, swarming north today in the soft green of spring, those glittering killer
bees. A mother now, she opens the door and sends her son scampering into
the lovely hum with an empty jar and a kiss on the cheek.


[Laura Kasischke {1961- } 'Recipe for Disaster', from Space, in Chains]