by Catherine Zickgraf

Warpath

Night winds the native mountain routes, circling

back through abandoned camps layered deep with

the kindling of death.

The ground takes its pay

where opened veins gilt moon in the face of mud,

soaking the paths with burial sashes.

But at home,

springs follow glinting stones under houses where

salt once dripped hooked bones.  In darkness, the

young are patchworked in.

And there by the waxed

glow, matriachs rip strips from dresses to tie wounds,

restitching themselves in grays in the name of pine

thicket martyrs.  Let calm fill the cabins.

Still when

drums rush ears to awaken the land in supplication,

yet before they crawl the stalks seeking lost harvests,

they’ll pray hope in the dew of new waves of dawn.

Canary

Fake flowers and liniment bottles don’t rot

though decades back their owners last left

the locks unturned.

Now explorers scatter dust and feathers,

searching dates from piles of papers

under a caged upturned breastbone.

A song long ago slipped its wires,

burst the sofa window, dissolved into

ocean of wide open sky.

Catherine Zickgraf has performed her poetry in Madrid, San Juan, and three dozen other cities—yet homeschooling her autistic youngest inspires her the most.  Her writing has appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association, [Pank], Victorian Violet Press, and The Grief Diaries.  Find her here.