Catherine Zickgraf

Homestead

She         tours her woods, finds flora warring its hosts,
storm         in the air stirring sheets on lost lines where
elements       degrade poles in their oldness.   Vines are
constricting    broken rooms, chasing out their ghosts.
Through ivy roofs of            ruins sieving now the wind,
the old homestead             is bled out, sits pale, emptied
of failed hearts.              Three generations gone, bodies
laid in graves,             souls rose to account for their sin.




Losing It                                      

Marbles roll across her cherry table 
late night.  She upset the jar of Earth 
azures, goldstones of Mars.  Her dang-
ling fixture spotlights glass worlds spin-
ning across the linen.  
                                             Wrapped in middle
ofthenight aloneness, she jumped when the 
fridge hum kicked in and stirred up her calm.
The smith melted silica for her; from his panes
he twisted up spheres, sealing their liquid spirits 
inside.  In the flame, storms struck shell to center, 
emerald meadows grew under the rain.  
                                                                             Their cases 
hardened, imprisoned inner things in protection as a 
soul in the kitchen darkness scales her skull to escape. 
He molded thousands of flowers in domes to save them 
from themselves, to freeze beauty in death’s silence. 
                                                                                                    Still 
petals inside keep blooming in their colors—spilled spirals 
spread infinite arms, vortices tunnel her core, spun as blood 
ribbons swim crystal bubbles, refusing that slow paralysis of 
forgotten dead.  And each unsocketed eye sees itself rained on 
her wooden floor, losing itself under her oven in the dusty calm.

Catherine Zickgraf has performed her Spanish poetry on stages in Madrid and Puerto Rico—yet homeschooling her boys inspires her the most at the moment. Her writing has appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Pank, Bartleby-Snopes, and GUD Magazine. Her chapbook, Every Clock Has Its Place, is available through Sweatshoppe Publications.
 
 
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