The Time Machine – by Laura Kasischke

Laura Kasischke’s The Time Machine offers us surreal and transformative explorations into memory, mortality, and femininity.  In the opening poem, Laura tells us: “This is what it feels like / to be a woman / who is also a vulture.”  In a sense, Kasischke’s 9th book of poetry is an elegy for the present-self, at once a reminder of all we have lost – “You / were loved wildly before you even had time to open your eyes. / But now you can never catch up. / And that’s the problem” – and all we have to gain if we dig deeply into ourselves – “In the end, no / training was needed… I taught myself so well. / It’s all I can do now.”