'Dinner': A Poem by Catherine Zickgraf

DINNER
She up-cinches her nostrils
like the bunched neck and shoulders
of a swamp hag or caped blood sucker.
Her back bone-blades levitate,
thin as a skipping stone,
slicing smoke fog
from moat mud.
The night world cowers under
her wings—a clavicle like a quiver
slants across each breast.
In her stomach spin noxious letters.
They grow into words
and scale her throat,
to her mouth,
and she holds them there on the
slug of her tongue,
readied like arrows
aimed down in rows.
She appoints the time
to pierce the skin
of the little girl dithering
among the night trees,
struggling home.
And there at the door,
her mother says,
you stray dog, you whore,
with skin sliding off her like a ghost.
Finger bone against
bone against knife—
at the head of the table,
she slices the roast.
Catherine Zickgraf’s main jobs are to hang out with her family and write poetry. Her work has appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Pank, Victorian Violet Press and The Grief Diaries. Her recent chapbook, Soul Full of Eye, is published through Aldrich Press. Read and watch her at caththegreat.blogspot.com