POETRY
Katie Sarah Zale has published two books and one chapbook of poetry. A new collection, The Weight of a Leaf, will be released by Kelsay Books in early 2024. Katie earned her MFA in poetry from Goddard College. Katie published her first poetry book, The Art of Folding, following her travels with the Compassionate Listening Project to Israel and Palestine. Her collection, Sometimes We Do Things, celebrates a re-envisioning and celebration of Detroit. She co-edited the anthology Strange Fruit: Poems on the Death Penalty with hopes of persuading the Washington State Supreme Court to abolish the death penalty. The author of numerous literary, magazine, newspaper, and academic articles, including “Listening as the Foundation of Peace-building: Teaching Peace in the Humanities” that she co-authored with Jane Rosecrans (in Peace-building in Community Colleges: A Teaching Resource. U.S. Institute of Peace, 2013), she published a biography and is presently editing a book of fiction about gay soldiers in World War II.
Awards include:
- “Bread.” Northwind Arts Center (NAC) jury selection; one of ten poems for artists to interpret for POEM INSPIRED event, October 2016. Port Townsend, WA
- “September 24, 1830: The Last Hanging in Michigan.” Finalist. Split This Rock 2011 Poetry Contest. Judge: Naomi Shihab Nye.
- “An Old Story of Food.” Finalist. Split This Rock 2010 Poetry Contest. Judge: Chris Abani.
- “The Refugee at Al-Arroub Fails to Explain.” Winner: 2009 Anita McAndrews Award/ Poets for Human Rights. Judge: Sheema Kalbasi
- “Spring.” Finalist. Many Mountains Moving Poetry Contest (Jan. 2009). Anne-Marie Cusac, judge.
- “Laundry.” Finalist. 2008 Muriel Craft Bailey Poetry Contest.
- “March.” Finalist in Comstock Review contest, 2006.
- “The Prayer.” Winner: First Place. OSPA –WPA (Oregon State Poets Assn—Washington State Poets Assn) Fall 2006 Contest
Poems by Katie Sarah Zale
—from Many Mountains Moving
Spring
She stares into the space beside her,
drawing her hand across the unease
of his sleep. She sees tufts of sheet,
furrows of soil, a fallow wait
for yet another season.
The morning light settles at the table
like cream in coffee he sips cold
as icy dew drapes the garden.
He fingers a cup with rings that mark—
how many mornings like this?
He remembers
picking cilantro from the garden,
fanning it across his cheeks and
he could smell her. Lifting
a butternut squash from its vine—
he could feel her,
his cheek upon hips
that would spread like wings
and they would fly.
He stands at the door where she lies,
sees the day cross her face
the way ice gives up gray
as it melts. He sees—
himself on the bed at her side—
two seeds
in a crease of spring soil.
________________
—from Sometimes You Do Things
Sweet Peas and a Blush of Radicchio
Detroit, I still miss you. Your fenced-in gardens
filled with sustenance and Saturday evening bloom.
—David Blair (1967-2011)
young and not
yet awake from a dream
we believe in wings
rising on fire
burning in myth
now
truth is more
quantum—we count
the seeds we plant
we are patient
we believe in something
primal—in nothing more
than the slip of soil
through our hands
it has finally come to this
it is weary
the sun
finding its way back
from behind a civilized sky
it is tender
our wait
for a sprig of bloom
the peel of petal upon petal
of an artichoke
to reach the heart
we understand again
the unfolding
of story—the draw of quiet
and a presence so
simple and alive we
know the answer
buildings
empty or
of vernal use
scratch the sky
give morning
or afternoon shade
to the swiss chard
spinach and kale
arugula broccoli beets
the climb of sweet peas
the blush of radicchio
youth
arrive in busses
to work in the gardens
they surround Malik like bees
to pollinate the crops—
the air smells
like honey
Brother Rick
sits on the corner
of Meldrum and St. Paul
pans the rows
of onions endive basil
butter-leaf lettuce
squash and beans
he recalls
tilling the land—
a mix of earth
and things that recall
a human life
a plastic fork a bone
china plate a rose teacup
with no handle a timer a
tea ball a recipe for soup
he remembers the homes
Charity
rhizome in her reach
sits with young girls
and watches them watch
what she plants—
she listens she waits
for spring
Wayne and Myrtle
smile at their son
as he uproots a carrot
still clinging to the manna
of rich soil
and eats
__________________________
—from The Art Of Folding
The Folly of Half
Aman understands the walnut,
how the line of its equator,
like disconsolate lips, waits.
She understands the avocado,
sliced from point to round,
how one half falls away
from the pit. She misses it.
She is Muslim-Arab, she is
Israeli. She is a mismatched
sock after all the clothes
are folded. Solomon understands
the folly of splitting the baby.
So it says in Kings 3, in the Qur’an.
Aman is waiting for her mother
to cry out. My ear is pressed
to the belly of the land. I am
listening. Something stirs.
I feel it kick.
_______________________________
—from Explain the Moon To Me
Prison
I explain the moon to her
and she explains it back.
—Sally Keith
My brother writes from a prison cell.
He says the moon is memory, pale against a blue sky
on a September afternoon.
The moon is an arc, I say. A parenthesis,
the afterthought of something always missing
from the conversation.
The creek where I walk has grown narrow
in its cycle from spring to summer, and nearly dry.
Yet I hear a rush of water as it folds across the rocks.
He tells me he rarely thinks of the outdoors.
He explains how he fingers the uncertain source of light
that textures his concrete walls.
I write him words rare and smoky as a blue moon.
He says the censor of mail believes nothing
can hide in words.
In poetry, I tell him, words are chameleon.
He says regret is a light that eats away at the night
and fades with the dawn of day.
My brother lives in a cell. I call him a seed
with roots in the ground, unable to open.
Let us talk of other things, he says.
In what we don’t say, I explain, is the prison.
He does not write me back.
_____________________________
—from The Weight of a Leaf
Five Years Later in Tucson
—for Sam Hamill (d. 14 April 2018)
It is spring in the desert. Lupine, paintbrush,
larkspur, lily and penstemon wildflowers
sweep through the hillsides of gold brittlebush.
It is April 14. Otherwise, it makes no sense
at this moment to think about war, bunkers,
war ghettos and detention camps, and how many
sunflowers are still alive in Ukraine.
It was late in 2017 when a friend ended an email:
One more thing—call Sam.
I follow the Santa Cruz River, pause to hear it gurgle
over and around rocks on its journey north
to escape the southern border.
A white blossom—perhaps an early moonflower,
nocturnal, lives only a single night. It retreats now
into a briar of sagebrush and juniper. Spring…
flowers laughing in the wind…wishing and hoping.
Basho so young, says Sam, does not know he will die.
Where the river once ran furiously, only puddles
remain. A child, with legs new to walking, stumbles
headfirst toward the scurry and flip of bullhead catfish.
She reaches for one, only its belly and lower jaw
in the water, its gills panting.
Someone uses a stick to coax the fish
to deeper water, though the puddles are already full
with panic. The catfish leaps, landing where it was.
We gather in a circle around it, everyone inhaling,
exhaling, in alarm, as if for the first time we are
learning about death. When the fish goes still,
we forget to breathe.