Kirsten Kaschock

CARYATID

The function of art is to struggle against obligation.

Someone wrapped the girl around a wasp—
around its cinch, she was circled
a dozen times or more, until wasp was un-
wasp, no longer able to wear wasp skirts
with the taut belt, even flying, even
stabbing compromised.
                                       It got so
bad—girl girding wasp in yo-yo—they had to
sit in perfect calm in the papercool hive having
out their ill-fit arrangement. “Why are you wound
this way?” went the universe (wasps refuse
the teleological) expecting a non-answer.
The girl tried to form a coherence
other than the shape leant her
by her strangling act.
                                 The thread
of things failed legibility, became a factless shriek
goring electric through the jam of her host’s
ample abdomen, so that spasmed wasp could
make out “to bring you pain,” and that
only. This, too, is how I am certain
a daughter would appear to me.
                                                       In plague.

(Amedeo Modigliani)

KIRSTEN KASCHOCK is the author of five poetry books. Coffee House Press published her debut speculative novel, Sleight in 2011, and a second novel is forthcoming from Chapter House Publishing. She has recently transplanted herself to Baltimore, where she awaits bloom.