Katherine's Coffeehouse

It is Wednesday, and I put my work on pause. I find my old art bag, carry watercolor pencils to Battlefield Park. My leggings pick up hitch hikers, their bristles clinging to me, as if I were a spring tree, and they, leaves. And suddenly, I am six again, wearing fuchsia, new sneakers already muddy. […]

By Katherine Gotthardt Somewhere in the midst of life’s lessons, I’m forgetting how to speak. I think it might be the COVID solitude, demanding silence and order and discipline, the daily tidying of a cluttered workspace I don’t want anyone to see. Or maybe it’s approaching winter, early morning frost telling us all to hush. […]

By Katherine Gotthardt The turtle has been crushed by a mower, life leaving through cracks in its shattered shell, coagulated, looking like cranberries and minced meat, the poor thing bobbing an intact head trying to look behind itself, as if wondering what could have gone wrong. And I am devastated because I can neither put […]

By Katherine Gotthardt Somewhere, there’s what I should be doing, somewhere between the smudged edges of you and me, between the places where time and things collect, and I become a bit overwrought. I look around this room, this one room, and I am breathless – not because it is beautiful, not with appreciation, not […]

I tell you trust isn't something I lend like a new book you know damn well will never be returned. It isn't something I save on my shelf, waiting to give away. It's more like a person I don't want to introduce. You could try to find and kidnap him, but that's not how trust […]

In withering arms of darkness, dew trying to pass for rainwater, beaten terrain attempts to rise,

Seeking comfort in success

By Katherine Gotthardt In the dream, my bed is cemented in a storefront, and I, no control over window treatments or shades, curl in the corner of strangers’ eyes, try to sleep. When I wake, I wonder what that was all about. Was it because I furniture shopped with my adult daughter last week? Checked […]

Freedom means choosing your light, picking which part of the day means most, rising with mourning doves and dew, or celebrating the moon’s evolution.   What becomes of the sunrise, you writers already know: Daytime. Clockwork. Clouds and showers, temperatures based on the Earth’s hot moods.   Evening feels so much smoother, starlight beaming you […]

Today, the hate of the world weighs heavy, and I must remain a poet,