Category: Ilyse Kusnetz

by Ilyse Kusnetz

From six to sixteen, I scoured the balloons.

I knew the one he rode—Challenger.

My parents took 10,000 pictures. All the same.

And I was dying, Richard, of the mundane

at the center of profundity. I tried seeing

the opposite, but when you’re ten,

family is an inferno. I needed answers

about drifting the heavens, having no fear,

just the wind mussing our horse-mane hair

as you broke record after record, and I couldn’t

reach you to ask the secret of your success.

Even now, I imagine you flying away on a dirigible,

a steampunk hero, goggles on, guns blazing,

yelling over your shoulder for me to keep up.

“I’ve got a private island,” you say, in case

things turn rough, “a helicopter on the roof.”

Did you know, every poem is a spaceship?

And it’s good to be in touch with the tactile,

but sometimes you need lift and separation,

which is, I think, why I rose in my seat

in the waiting room, the doctor’s blood price

heavy upon me, as I sorted the pieces of a purple

balloon for the Fiesta’s jigsaw puzzle.

Piecing the past together, here, a few broken pieces

at a time, Sir Richard. Once, I watched

you rappel down your space station

in New Mexico, your children by your side.

I remember, I continued to shout: “Take me with you!”

That time, you were on television and couldn’t

hear me. Your children grinned like satisfied

wolves at their father, the head of the first

space dynasty in the world. But I have

to tell you, Richard, like an old cat, my legs

no longer work right. I fear this may be it.

Will your weightless ship pause for me?

Will your starlit arms cast my soul

like a constellation, into space?

from Angel BonesFind more by Ilyse Kusnetz at the library

Copyright © 2019 Ilyse Kusnetz
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Alice James Books.

by Ilyse Kusnetz

Just another day in hyper-capitalist society—

in my Facebook feed, news of rabbits and

chickens tortured on meat farms, but I’m still not

vegan and I’m waiting to die myself

from cancer I may have gotten from soil or groundwater

contaminated by nuclear weapons, and no amount

of posting uplifting stories is going to fix that.

And lord, let them cease trying to control women’s

bodies, people’s genders, people’s desires,

let them stop hating people because of their color

and ethnicities. I want to shake the bigots and racists

till their teeth rattle loose and they lose their bite,

till their tongues swell up in their mouths

and they’re stricken mute. I want to save

all the slaughtered animals, save the seas and their

inhabitants—whales, birds, the tiniest bivalves—

from choking on plastic. I want to purify the air

of sulfur and carbon dioxide, scrape the lead

from plumbing pipes, god I need to do something

besides dying, besides thinking about death

and the neofascist politicians who lead

a nation of people unable to think critically

after 40 years’ systemic dismantling

of the education system by the rich

so their lackeys can make it

illegal to prosecute corporations for poisoning

the air, earth, water—and Jesus, isn’t it

a kind of mental illness

annihilating what you need to stay alive

for the accumulation of blind profit—

and in the process killing and killing and

murdering me, along with the people and animals

I can’t save but want to, with all my goddamn

fucking heart, but instead I’m waiting

to die, trying to find some last meaning in all

of this. A warning, perhaps. You’re next.

from Angel BonesFind more by Ilyse Kusnetz at the library

Copyright © 2019 Ilyse Kusnetz
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Alice James Books.

by Ilyse Kusnetz

Because if no one’s looking, your atoms

might choose to go through both quantum

slits by accident, and we can’t have that.

Because if I look into your eyes,

even a billion years after the original

quantum experiment, I’ll find you again.

We’ll be entangled then, whether this universe

is the Matrix, or a hologram, our patterns

depending on one another to exist.

They say it’s consciousness that keeps us

together, space and time a cloud of illusions.

So I’ll wait as long as it takes, sweet one—

You’re mine, the moment our eyes meet.

from Angel BonesFind more by Ilyse Kusnetz at the library

Copyright © 2019 Ilyse Kusnetz
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Alice James Books.

by Ilyse Kusnetz

It sounds like dying, but deadbolt

mechanisms depend upon precise moments

and movements, cogs and wheels adjoining

in concert or alternating. Can’t you hear it now—

a steam train sounding and all that great

brass rattling down the tracks,

the tracks, the music of life rocking you

in and out of sleep and

wake, the delve and douse we do

when we dream of hearts and souls

and who has claim on ours, a key in an antique

lock, that perfect timing, that turn over and click—

from Angel BonesFind more by Ilyse Kusnetz at the library

Copyright © 2019 Ilyse Kusnetz
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Alice James Books.

by Ilyse Kusnetz

To hold it for a moment

there is always a price.

Take the seashore, endless sunlight

bursting on water—

pelicans and gulls spindive,

and the tide’s quick shift of sand

is like absence under my feet,

a net cinching tight

until I stumble.

This is the world’s gift to me

because I thought

it could be held,

thought I wouldn’t be

burned by its beauty:

it says

There is no place

solid

to stand.

Even stillness—

like the concentrated beacon

of a heron

tracking small, dark fish

under the surf—

cannot save me.

from Angel BonesFind more by Ilyse Kusnetz at the library

Copyright © 2019 Ilyse Kusnetz
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Alice James Books.