Catherine Zickgraf has performed her poetry in Madrid, San Juan, and three dozen other cities. But due to illness, her main jobs now are to hang out with her family and write more poetry. Her work has appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Pank, Victorian Violet Press, and The Grief Diaries. Her new chapbook, Soul Full of Eye, is published through Aldrich Press and is available on Amazon.com.

Minimal

In the fullness of summer, mowers decapitate green necks
              of dandelions and red clover,
              slicing their flowers between matted blades.

We stop gashing our lawn as it’s shocked with October frost.
              When the winter wind spreads arms down the valley,
              my garden zinnias turn to death and skeletonize.

On the back porch tonight, I reach through the atmosphere,
              lengthening glowing arms into space. I ease the moon
              from its netted cradle, an egg in the nest of my palm.

I am minimal, though, under the sky’s dark quilt.
              I’m a speck in the weeds of my acre yard
              on a tiny rock rounding its ancient orbit.