Katherine's Coffeehouse

It's absurd, this deafening ring, as if I'd put my ear by an air raid call, let the sound in, allowed the assault. The results are astoundingly inconsistent - deaf to the voice of my husband, overly sensitive to the wail of t.v. What was that you said, honey? Ouch. Please turn down the volume, […]

That 1980’s phone, boxy against your ear – don’t you think we could hear better then? Didn’t we listen more closely back then? Nothing like these damn flat phones. I press them against the cartilage, grinding my lobe against the glass, earrings clinking. Whoosh. There’s the wind again. What was that you said? Never mind. […]

Protest poem by Katherine M. Gotthardt

I yanked the fragment from my eye, through burst blood vessels glimpsed clearly the one still in yours, jutting through the soft membrane of what you consider truth, teargas and tanks. What to do when an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

Sometimes, when spring yawns, its slow, honeysuckle breath warming my face, I think to myself, “What a wonderful world.”

All love is an afterthought, an ideal that whispers “remember me,” carrying us, wildflowers in a basket, petals falling, lighting on the edge of gravel. Funny how the road boasted victory. I just remember the windlessness, the still miracle that carried us gently, setting us down with purpose. There we waited for the next rain, […]

To cure my dog of her errant ways, I bought a vibrating collar, clipped it around the fat of her neck, popped the tether’s hook into the ring, took her out for a spin. See, she’s the type that goes for the throat, fellow canine or random kid, it doesn’t matter. Introduce her to a […]

This is how I remember you, white apron speckled with red sauce, spectacles on the end of your nose, eyes rolling heavenward while you stifled a mutter, “Sweet baby Jesus, will you ever stop?” That I didn’t showed us both something: I was not to be trusted. Not with dirty pots I’d stuck to the […]

I look down, and it’s on my thigh, just sitting there, sucking the last bit of self from me, and I wonder, for a second, how it lives, all those antidepressants in my blood, all those germs on public toilets. What a time to get a tick, I think, for these bumps to arise, pushing […]

I learned young to serve: ring the bell at Christmas, thank strangers for their change, handle hot tongs, release chicken legs onto soup kitchen plates, bag diapers and tampons, pass them to the poor, no inkling one day, I would be among them. This, I learned older: how hard it is to stand in line, […]