Author Archives: Katie Sticca

  Between the four walls of fable and four shelves of forgotten books,   back of stairs that double back to earth, above the grimed arc of the kitchen,   though not above argument, a need of new alignments.   … Read More

  At first, immunizations & cherry lollipops. Scales, stethoscopes, Disposable bedding. Formica & triage rooms. The delayed ache Of epidurals & birth. Latex gloves. Barium. The occasional mistaken Stone & sludge. Operations & all the risks of being opened up: … Read More

  The first time I met my new family I lit a match in the bathroom. I wanted to make a flame. It was an accident. Downstairs the strangers ate and drank. It spread, from my hand to the toilet … Read More

  Buoyant on hummingbird wings; Julien guides the eye of the drone. From afar, the top of the lighthouse looks like a lunar module— fire on re-entry, glass cracked and fumed. Down here on Litløy, I scrape moss with a … Read More

  Big old heron fishes midstream, wading as through a time slower than the Susquehanna’s hours upon years upon stone, so when he flies I almost panic after all this time in the shallows,   colors floating by, Canada geese … Read More

In the dream or half-dream half waking I was filling a book with writing about a child’s survival, and longing. As I kept writing the book grew thicker. What were the pages filled with? I thought, at least I can … Read More

  In late summer. The hunger of bears. Its logic. Its shifting mouth. Its swift stripping. And prodigious energy.   She looks up as if to say, I will not perish. See me. Turns her head toward the red berries. … Read More

  —with thanks to Geoff Notkin   —a piece of it, lunar rock, gingerly, as directed. I gave him the moon, or as we call it, mah, the H heard too. In Farsi, one word means everything like it; milk … Read More

    You were my Persephone until you abducted yourself. From me. Gone (    ) Where? Why? How? Who are you? My body echoes with your absence, with once-and-lost inflections. I do not remember seasons. Time is a dry riverbed. … Read More

  Summer burned easily. And everyone had something to say. The rock said, be finished with sweetness. The tree said, repeat like a lie. The ground said, a mouse is a garden. The mouse said, stay out of the garden. … Read More