The Sun Fights an Anxiety Attack The sun is lost in his shirt and thrusting a million bent arms against cotton sleeves— they’re twisted inside, his throat stuffed shut; he rages to scratch himself out of his shroud. With bloated lungs, he’s wound in the clouds; the sky powers wrestle—they’re monsters, they drool and drop their sweat— electric bursts of skeletal fingers break free and blacken some small things below. Fishing Tomorrow The line doesn’t wind or tighten as it should or would if he were a real man, he said out loud at the outside table—the string all strung on the chairs, a hook stuck in a cushion, the opened booklet confusing him more. The only time his Dad ever taught him anything was when he tossed the kid would float. Nightstand He emptied his nightstand when he left. His drawers wobble and echo. The bed drifts, his hot weight withdrawn. I'm unanchored, erring into the tide. And the wind lifts the pillows I've fluffed and stacked in the slate-clean sheets. I lined the linen edges square with our wedding quilt ruffles. Now they’re dripping in ocean. The waves rise up like ledges and cover my sleeplessness. I'm trying to breathe under layers of water.
Catherine Zickgraf is a former American Northerner excited about growing her roots into the red Georgia clay. Her most recent credits include a forthcoming poem in Journal of the American Medical Association’s “Poetry and Medicine” section. She is indebted to myspace for reuniting her with the son she placed for adoption eighteen years ago. You can find her there: myspace.com/czickgraf.
