Author Archives: Katie Sticca

  1. The Melancholy of Departure The removal began precisely as its planners had decided months earlier with names and ages and dispositions: dead, the dispositions always showed those to be named dead by execution or disease, and that too … Read More

  The train seems heavier on the tracks tonight although the news is now old news—   the unexpected derision at the local hangout, the two girls who were drinking on the trestle,   tweeting, levitating (one wrote), on the … Read More

  When I return to the dog, the first thing I see is the teeth. And then the dog disappears. But the teeth remain. Bared. Bereft of dog. The bared teeth. They open wide as if to sieze upon the … Read More

  We sit beneath a giant maple watching pirouettes of yellow gust upwards, each leaf an illumined skin stretched across a pliable spine. My son spins an apple between his hands, bites it like a bucktoothed animal. Mouth full, cheeks … Read More

  Completely blind since  birth, Laura would stare for minutes into a close-held flashlight beam, press the heels of her thumbs into her eyes so she could ‘see’ the eruption of thin, splintered veins of light. On stormy days, we … Read More

  At the bus stop under the horse chestnut, we tally the length of Boyhood against the babysitter’s plans for later and, waiting, see the leaves have started to wilt, brown at their July edges, losing a little of spring’s … Read More

  The first block stretched on with big doors and sometimes a doorman standing in front who smiled or touched his hand to his hat and I hurried past to get to the next block where the houses were smaller … Read More

  where Route 100 meets School Street, two cows graze. I’ve heard Vermonters lend their cows to neighbors—and to the city, it seems—free food for cows, free mowing for the field’s owner. But a rotary? That hardly seems like a … Read More

  I always knew that Grandma’s grandfather crashed on the cliffs of Newfoundland, and that we are here because he climbed the waves atop a freezing rock and stayed there for days till rescue boats arrived. But by the end … Read More