Katharine Whitcomb

Animate Objects

Whose face changed.

Whose shoulder worn a groove.

Whose careful thought.

Whose cat a boy pharaoh on a blanket.

Whose father in rehab wears torn pants.

Whose mother no longer.

Whose solitude leaf-blown, matted with rain.

Whose breeze carries whinnying from the fields.

Whose chives bloom purple mandalas.

Whose offerings burn from long ago.

Whose hope a foundling on the road.

Whose ghosts haunt no house.

Whose knives dull.

Whose secrets frayed hems.

Whose heart a wretch awake.

Katharine Whitcomb is the author of four collections of poems: The Daughter’s Almanac (University of Nebraska Press, chosen by Patricia Smith as the winner of the 2014 Backwaters Prize), Lamp of Letters (Floating Bridge Press, winner of the 2009 Floating Bridge Chapbook Award), Saints of South Dakota & Other Poems (Bluestem Press, chosen by Lucia Perillo as the winner of the 2000 Bluestem Award), and Hosannas (Parallel Press, 1999). She was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, and was awarded fellowships to the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. Recent poems appear in Bennington Review, The Gettysburg Review, On the Seawall, Green Mountains Review online and EcoTheo Review. She teaches at Central Washington University and lives in Ellensburg, Washington. Her favorite sweet is Marzipan.

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