Friday Mar 29

Strisik Poetry Catherine Strisik is the author of The Mistress: a journey with the ravages and intricacies of Parkinson’s Disease and its accompanying betrayals, loves, and acceptances, and the diminishment and enlightenment of both the physical and spiritual self: forthcoming from 3: A Taos Press. She is also author of Thousand-Cricket Song, 2010, (Plain View Press), a poetic response to the genocide and healing in Cambodia. Active in the Taos poetry community for over 30 years, Strisik has received grants, honors and prizes from Peregrine, and Comstock Review, The Puffin Foundation, as well as a residency at the Vermont Studio Center. Some of her publications include Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Drunken Boat, Cider Press Review, Cutthroat, Studio, 5 AM, Café Review, Tusculum Review. She is co-editor of the online journal, Taos Journal of International Poetry & Art.
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In Late Afternoon Gold Each


moment
I’ve

waited
with my startled

    heartbeat

       a voice almost a whisper smile   smile again look at me   the /i/

edging me toward an

    often burrowed beauty.



How exact my how fingered my

balance on one foot my already pricked wound aromatic
with gesture and delay the

lids a protective shield like shades eyes hidden my

eyes, an unsteady rhythm

of gaze. I’m too
thin I know. If only I’d had a bit more weight on my bones
eaten more feta that month and
fatted lamb the lines

of the last year’s nervous sienna
my one holy a
mention
of wolf

the mere mention of—
wolf turns me
the most beautiful
I’ve known

oh

for god's sake
I’ve worn
two wedding dresses
both of them ivory
one with a hat with a veil the other
with a fetus all before the lines that
developed into the rest of life's
mirroredness. But who would know?                         My husband

with his new appreciation for composition
and an unusual need for orange blossom
honey.                         Watches

from the barbwire fence.