Katherine Spadaro: ‘Black Fur Bookends’, ‘Cracked Candle’ and ‘The Afternoon Panel’

Black Fur Bookends

Crouching next to my little dog I comb her on the balcony, high above the car-studded street. Neat and small she is, with short fur, shiny and dark (and how it sheds on the white apartment tiles); a lover of comfort and admiration, she stands entranced and delighted while I brush her fur. Her black, black fur.
My oldest dog, how big you were! Your rough coat like the wind-frayed grass around Granny’s house, you’d creep inside and wedge under the table, great guilt of presumption around your shoulders … How quiet and true your blackness, in that island where dogs worked and guarded, where sheep weighed on one’s mind: your patience like the sea, returning again.

Katherine Spadaro

Cracked Candle

Brought out from the box it broke in

it stands in the candlestick now

lit. After a stuttering, fitful start,

it grows into glowing. Wax

flows and weeps down its sides,

strengthens its straightening—

spentness shaped into scaffold:

its bentness is burning to beauty.

Katherine Spadaro

The Afternoon Panel

body tired
eyes keep closing
plastic chair not bed

rumble voices
mumble on
don’t know what they said

try to prop
my mind up but
it’s tumbling instead

sliding down
the inside
of my head.

Katherine Spadaro