Author Archives: Katie Sticca

  Their udders were so bloated a thorn might have slayed them. Sidestepping their own stiff tits, the cows hustled & hurtled   through the doorway, a barge of skull & shoulder ramming a road to the feed trough. They … Read More

  At night I think about my father— how he no longer tends all the plants in his garden.   I wonder if in his blueprints   he draws our family in the living room or even uses a ruler … Read More

  No need for an appointment, crisis will erupt without you, another loud melancholy.   Stop picking your skin, pulling hair. Your mother would say stop that   you’ll leave a scar. Stop that you’re going to go bald. Maybe … Read More

  Your mother tells me how her own mother always talked when she did jigsaw puzzles,   pushing the pieces in and muttering “I’ll make you fit” under her breath.   I never met her, but she feels like a … Read More

  everyone i lived with is either dead or has since been reborn. on the cape sober houses flank summer homes. august women reek of moisture and diamonds. i know scallop fishermen whose hands smell more like fentanyl than mollusk. … Read More

  God it’s cold but not so cold that I would rather be asleep. I just want a little quiet and a lot of money, hallelujah. Now I am a cartographer scraping the frost from my windshield to make the … Read More

  How we love: by taking another name into our mouth and swallowing it   for safekeeping. By softening at a touch the way dusk dissolves the city,   bodies unmooring, skin syrup-sweet. I read a poem in The New … Read More

  You know the story He became the rain Then a roaring fire Face impassive Flames licking warm & thick & ferocious The furl of his shirt in hot air The room glowed The walls cracked & fissured The ceiling … Read More

  is a convenience: we say fish don’t feel it. catch   a trout by its lip & leave a hook there, boil   a lobster alive & think steam, not   scream. lay a child’s head on concrete & … Read More

  two crows have landed on the roof of the applebee’s, so it must be   halloween. for crows are the spookiest bird & applebee’s is the spookiest place   & two is the spookiest number if you think about … Read More

  I used to have this job that was just an angle.   What was required of me was to not be toward it, not tilt my body in a certain direction and at a precise degree, and if I … Read More