Author Archives: Katie Sticca

  The strangest sleep I slept was not beneath willows                  on twigs and brush              and what if I weighed the desires I didn’t act on?   … Read More

  They look too busy to retire. Or else some government has cut their pensions and they have no option but to remain industrious, whatever it is that they do, exactly, at certain hours, when the tide has fallen.   … Read More

  “So much charm, and such a fierce flame,” I woke up thinking I’d write on her card after I heard at work that she’d chosen hospice instead of further treatment.   “No flowers,” she’d commanded. So I imagined her … Read More

  In this nation born of sacrificial smoke, born of vague bullets into an abstract heart…   By the light of candles I read the history books and the consensus seems: blood flowed like a river.   *   From … Read More

  Our Savior’s spine shines incandescent. We walk on each other’s bare heels, follow one another by our sense of light.   We walk through pine and stubble. We walk under one moon, one sun, one God toward our becoming … Read More

  Impossible to read, held with another bit of wax, like chewing gum A small white calling card full of emptiness         A girl dances in a burgundy bikini at the water’s edge, gold feet, a shark, … Read More

          Joseph Husson 1840, ink & watercolor   At the center is the Ocean of Love Though it’s not a circle – one ragged Peninsula to the left is the Gulf of Despondency, Cape Hope in … Read More

  it began on Timbre Ridge Lake after a concussion of rain it began as apparitions in wisps and runnels don’t whimper at the old mine’s whistling don’t run away at the sight of your own flashlight try to know … Read More

  Here on the cold examination table, I miss the cradle of my bra. Soon the radiologist will sink a bright needle into my breast.   In the low afternoon light, I envision a woman and a man painted on … Read More

  I once had a teacher who loved to cross out the first few pages of our stories – even when our stories were only a few pages long. He wanted us to see the difference between the start to … Read More

  We knew they couldn’t really arrest you for picnicking on the side of the road, but we kept reframing our position anyway. There were no signs, we protested, this isn’t fair – even though we knew that fair sometimes … Read More

  Under different circumstances, we might have enjoyed having our meals cooked for us, our activities coordinated, but we’d been evacuated from our sites and were worried that we were looking at an early flight home. In the middle of … Read More