The Infinitesimals. Laura Kasischke

      

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      Thank you. We hope you enjoy these poems.

       This e-book edition was created through a special grant provided by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation. Copper Canyon Press would like to thank Constellation Digital Services for their partnership in making this e-book possible.

       for Bill, Lucy & Jack Abernethy

      They are neither finite quantities nor quantities infinitely small, nor yet nothing. May we not call them the ghosts of departed quantities?

      George Berkeley

      Contents

        Title Page

        Note to Reader

       One: Outside Are the Dogs and the Sorcerers

      1  You’ve Come Back to Me

      2  The Two Witnesses

      3  Who

      4  In This Order

      5  Hurry

      6  Mushrooms

      7  The Invisible Passenger

      8  This Is Not a Poem/Fairy Tale

      9  How New a Summer Night

      10  That Men Should Kill One Another

      11  The First Trumpet

      12  At the End of the Text, a Small Bestial Form

      13  The Emptying of the Censers

      14  Canto One

      15  Barbed Wire

      16  Beast of the Sea

      17  To Do

      18  Perspective

      19  Hair

      20  The Second Trumpet

       Two: At the End of the Text, a Small Bestial Form

      1  Beast of the Sea

      2  Boy in Park

      3  Beati mortui

      4  Room

      5  Masks

      6  Game

      7  The Invalid

      8  Lottery

      9  Rondeau

      10  Milk Tree

      11  The Woman Escapes

      12  Binoculars

      13  The Third Trumpet

      14  A Dog, About to Pounce, Looks Back

      15  For the Young Woman I Saw Hit by a Car While Riding Her Bike

       Three: That Men Should Kill One Another

      1  Cecidit, cecidit Babylon

      2  The Book of Life

      3  Twentieth-Century Poetry

      4  Abel de Larue, 1582

      5  The Cure

      6  Six Days

      7  Comedy

      8  Ativan

      9  The Second Death

      10  The Common Cold

      11  K—

      12  Outside Are the Dogs and the Sorcerers

      13  Midnight

      14  Beast of the Sea

       Four: A Dog, About to Pounce, Looks Back

      1  Beast of the Sea

      2  Oblivion

      3  May Morning

      4  Fiftieth Birthday

      5  Of the Dead White Men

      6  Tall Grass

      7  Helicopter

      8  Fantasy/Sci-Fi

      9  Christ Appears in a Mandorla Enclosed by a Cloud

      10  Door

      11  The Martyr's Motel

      12  The Accident

      13  Ivan

      14  The First Resurrection

      15  Recall the Carousel

      16  Nine Herbs

      17  Atmosphere

      18  Over

      19  Present Perfect

        About the Author

        Books by Laura Kasischke

        Acknowledgments