PITH & GIST

By Catherine Wing / Issue 9

Once again we amnesiacs were

soaking our beans in some

vinegar and practicing our

theories of forgetting, what we

had and what we knew came in

a series of shallow boxes. The

sparrow’s song competed with

our own, which though cobbled

bright, had a less than durable

filament. We were pictures of a

blue available. We were the floor

models of an old flame. At last

we were getting rid of our lists

of little things. Three moonfuls

ago we were all surf trem with

depth and speed, focus and anti-

focus. And then? Fortune’s

contortion and a run in with the

gut-truck. Since that immoment

moment it’s been nothing but a

cabinet of natural disasters in a

temporary museum. You get the

burden of it. The wind rides in

the dovecote. It’s playing the

devil’s interval.

CATHERINE WING was born in Louisville, Kentucky, and attended Brown University before earning her MFA from the University of Washington. Her collections of poetry include Enter Invisible (2005), nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and Gin & Bleach (2012). Her poetry has appeared in such journals as Poetry, the Nation, and the Chicago Review and has been featured in a number of anthologies, including Best American Poetry (2010).She teaches at Kent State University and with the NEO-MFA, the nation’s only consortial program in Creative Writing.