Author Archives: Katie Sticca

  I am a root:                wishing itself a bird. I am fence:                inside a temple. I am a tooth:               … Read More

  Joe never learned to skate, kept falling down, busted   his nose once, got blood all over his winter coat.   He was big for his age, carried his father’s knife,   knew more about women than all of … Read More

  Set off by indigo and right angles Chagall’s cow appears to know something.  He regards me with a familiarity as he tilts his beveled head back.  There is no moon at which to bay.  He keeps eyeing me as … Read More

  Translation by Judy Katz-Levine   I live sitting, one who is an angel in the hands of a barber, holding a beer mug with deep grooves arc of the belly and the neck, a pipe against my teeth, under the … Read More

  Translation by Judy Katz-Levine   By the blue nights of summer, I will see rainbows in the paths, Scintillating stars by the wheat,  through minute herbs: Dreamer, I sense the freshness in my feet. I relax with the wind … Read More

  I’m not so barren, actually I’m waiting for a fire. Underneath me the immaculate aquifer where the rusted waters run iron-rich. There are no fish with holy gills. There are no toxic accidents. I am alone with my fullness. … Read More

  Around the shacks symphonies of grey in all its weathers;   stone, sea, sky. A scatter of plastic tables and chairs,   and faded Pepsi signs, the hum of people talking in the bar.   Somewhere behind me you … Read More

  On my walk I see in a matter of seconds an empty can of Arizona iced tea a dead black bird and a white man smiling at me from the driver’s seat of a passing car none of this … Read More

  Look here        at this cathedral arch I’ve wrought for us with beak and talon. Look at this shelter I’ve culled   from refuse and castaway plastics. See? I’ve painted its walls with berry juice. I’ve adorned its grounds with … Read More

  Which is to say dusk is approaching, as Pablo from Thessaloniki and Paige from Fox Chapel prepare to say their goodbyes. Pablo moving back to Cologne, which is a Latin word for colony. Paige back to Shadyside, which is … Read More

  the arrow piercing a metallic globe points to a concrete angel cradling a pot of incense while the rosemary grows wild and mint gives way to sage which sprawls like a body discovering a divan the collapsed trellis was … Read More

  I.   I’m the wave before it breaks the ground before it quakes the maelstrom before it hits the water before it boils the word before it forms.                       … Read More