Catherine Zickgraf- Three Poems

Love Language

They say she’s gone the way of Cain,

wallows in intentional misery               

as transgressor, slave to the spirit

working in her, a daughter of disobedience.

But she insists she’s God’s child                                                                                                

since He punishes her like a parent,

like when he twisted her up in bedding

and beat her almost nameless.                                    

She couldn’t remember her next breath

or how she found her way out,

didn’t know younger shapes in bunk beds 

noticed her spasming for air,

swollen-faced on the hall floor—

siblings who later call her liar.

She lay there born again, wet, swaddled in

their first pledge: to love her with discipline.

So when they disown her from God now,

it doesn’t take.

Taught God loves with violence,

she never doubts she is His child.

Temporary

Last night,

you cried in my chest that your ex-wife

was pregnant so she was marrying another

man—and I was there, holding your hand.

You’ve penetrated me with your private

thoughts for six years now.  But last night

in your bed, I saw her again in your head.

The red

rivers in your eyes pulsed with how you

once lulled her to sleep beside you.  Yet

in the daylight you kept her in your pocket,

forgot her when you were supposed to get

her, left her at work, let her walk home.

But I bet it severed her skin from bone, too,

to leave you and walk out.

And now,

you keep me beside you—you’re doing it

better since now you’re older.  I remember

the loves I’ve left behind too. . . But you are

mine, I’m here to hold you when you fall

into your own puddles, straddling the line

between excitement and fear. 

And here I am,

laundering the dirt from your shirts, tailoring

the crotch your big dick keeps ripping through

your jeans.  But I can fix nothing.  No rings

have passed between us, yet I’ll hold you till

the night passes and you finally break your

wedding glasses.

I can only

be the one who helps you move on, knowing

one day, there’ll be a new one who’ll help you

move on from me.

Case Study

Sick was she who birthed three skeletons

found under warrant in her older kids’ closets,

where searching revealed corpses in backpacks—

spines inside onesies, diapered pelvises,

skulls still crowned with midnight hair.

Since the dead were discovered dressed,

they most likely breathed before they ceased—

desiccated membranes in mattress excrement,

malaised and cachectic, vultures on ceiling,

eyes sedate, unaware of place.

Acute malnutrition seems less ghastly

than the months of chronic, silent wasting

I endured beside infants who didn’t survive.

Until rescue, I rotted too, since no one

knew I was even alive.



Catherine Zickgraf has performed her poetry in Madrid and Puerto Rico—yet homeschooling her autistic youngest inspires her the most.  Her writing has appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association, [Pank], Bartleby-Snopes, and GUD Magazine.  You can find her at http://caththegreat.blogspot.com