A Beautiful Name for a Girl

Kirsten Kaschock

A sample poem from the book

Daughter Song

(1)

Out of a body, the heart.
I wrapped it in red lettuce and sang to it.
I don’t know why it was more fall than I was.

The turning of the year
that usually anchored things
was extricating them.

Imagine my fear.

Removal of this, removal of
beauty, infancy.

(2)

Winter. The other word for aging.

Yearly, fewer people make it through January
than other months. On the radio.

I sang to the muscle even as it grew
ashy. The song was continuing pain.

I gave it up like fainting choirboys.
I gave it up like cancer.

I have no control over what comes out of me.

(3)

Bereft of the heart, the body
refused to lullaby. To lie down.

I could not make the body into a doll.
I had to leave it behind in the grass

to break down. While I went off
circling the tender
dying woods with its heart in a leaf.