Author Archives: Katie Sticca

The air in a 30-by-30-by-30-foot room weighs a ton. –Lancelot Hogben, Science for the Citizen   Though they’d watched it fill their sails and felt it lash their cheeks, had heard it whistle and roar and had seen black and … Read More

  The path was there before anyone human trod it A random formation in nature On the lofty cross the white-gowned angel lifted her heels At your finger’s touch the wreath of daisies turns to ashes shadow of a candlestick … Read More

  Why was my father wearing a blue formal jacket when it was so hot? It was summer in Oklahoma and over a hundred degrees. He wanted to know where he was. I explained that he could not return to … Read More

from “The Onset” by Robert Frost   The fated snow gathered dark song. Again, winter, overtaken by the end lets nothing heap long. Against a slender April rill flashes a birch, a clump of houses.

  An unremarkable corner café—he sits across from you at a table where he has waited patient as a ruin all your life. Nothing is more   than symbol, even your own body. +++++++He is your father,   he is … Read More

  Above the pecan grove, two curtains of rain, one turning purple, the other another of God’s interrogations, What makes you believe you are? Seen by the left eye, a hand. Seen by the right, a hand with a keyhole … Read More

  Sleek starlings flying low ++++over whitecaps on the bay ++++++++++remind me of Ortygia,   so far from where I am, ++++exactly where I wish ++++++++++to stroll the white stones   of Piazza Duomo, ++++stop in at the bookstore ++++++++++for … Read More

  It’s night in a subdivision whose name fills your ears with forest, and you’re sitting in a gazebo whose ivied trellises you’ve never seen in this shade of streetlight, and you’re busy being midwife to your bipolar, which rips … Read More

  Yes—cradle, then rain, sun, sand-box and rusted chain- link, baseball in the diamond by the playground, first base, first kiss, home plate, then heart- break, first house, black granite countertops, lilac centerpieces beside wedding plates, lit candles, red petals, … Read More

tr. by Peter Brown and Caroline Talpe   Dark, veiled lamps. A dark milk Filtering through the stretched Membrane. In the canal Motionless water shines. A fine Cover of mist diffuses The metallic sheen. A small Boat stands near the … Read More

Tr. from the French by Peter Brown and Caroline Talpe   The dawn instills its light into the blinds. I spread the slats and through the curved gap Observe the nearby buildings; a phantom fleet Of vessels lost within the … Read More

  It is sometimes necessary to walk barefoot along a moonlit riverbank on the sodden strip where water meets land to remind oneself that something in the mud remembers the stars.