CATHERINE KARNITIS
Poet & Coach
SELECTED PRINT PUBLICATIONS
SEA CAVE
Surrendered to the dream and reading serial
inscriptions layered deep in my mind's terrain
in Greco-Roman ruins, Sicily's
cathedrals, amphitheaters, songs of sea-
scapes, living by the sea, with lovers,
the stories told by legends, poetry. D.H.
Lawrence led me, his words concatenated
ways into myth and early civilizations.
A train delivered me to a palace.
We crossed by boat and leaned into the ruins.
We saw a complex clock tower, a lion,
a wooden door (inside golden rain).
I found my way into a rocky grotto.
I fell into the colors of God's palette.
published in Exit 13 magazine, Issue 28, 2023
DIRECTIONS
First, slow your awareness to living history.
An Instagram post is only a microscopic speck of dust.
You feel the sensation to go seatbelt-less.
Art resists packaging.
You reach the Paseo.
Keep your eye on the arc of raven and hawk.
See the tie-dye sky.
Welcome to the 1960s.
Most of the residents look like musicians, artists, writers.
They are. Get close. Some part is broken open.
A wind moves through. Desert light.
Duende through the Plaza.
History and memory do the two-step.
Follow the rainbow to the Pueblo.
The antelope, the ancestral spirits, will offer you delicious fry bread.
The adobe architecture, 1000 years old,
Frank Lloyd Wright, Antoni Gaudi have nothing on this people.
At a certain intersection, you may perceive the aura of a red blinking light.
Sometimes the sky turns red in a storm.
You are here.
You are here, now.
An audio recording of this poem is included in the directory of the public art piece,
the Telepoem Booth, a 1970s phone booth that one can dial-a-poem, installed at
the PASEO contemporary art festival September 2019. For more information
visit telepoembooth.com
JADE RING
green
color of the heart
jade
his mother's favorite stone
gold
ring intricate, floral
scaffold
holds the promise
of modernism
my finger
bears
the ring
...
(read the complete poem in the print journal Howl)
"jade ring" and "my eastern european ethnicity" were published in Howl in 2018
SELECTED ONLINE PUBLICATIONS
"THE CHAIR"
published in The Ekphrastic Review, January 11, 2021
(click on image to read poem)
"LOVERS" AND "GASLIGHT REMOVED"
published in POETiCA REViEW, Spring 2021, Issue 9
(click on image to read poems)
POCKET MOON
published in Change Seven Magazine, Summer 2023
(click on image to read poem)
UNEQUAL EXCHANGE
published in Burrow e-journal, February 2023
(click on image to read poem)
