{"mode":"live","websiteData":{"about":{"bio":"

Kathryn Gahl, who holds dual degrees in English and nursing, is a brightly lit performer whose use of language reaches out and grabs an audience. She thinks her focus on language began as a child, eating alphabet soup. Her multi-genre writing, deeply rooted in everyday life, combines a certain human pathos with quick wit and smile-worthy lines. Her works appear in three anthologies, four ekphrastic art shows, and over fifty journals, with awards from Glimmer Train, Margie, Chautauqua, Rosebud, The Mill, Talking Writing, The Hal Prize for Fiction and Poetry, New Millennium Writings, and Wisconsin People & Ideas.

A Pushcart nominee, she served as Writer-in-Residence at Lakeland University. In 2019, The Council of Wisconsin Writers presented her the Lorine Niedecker Poetry Award and in 2021, THE VELOCITY OF LOVE (Water’s Edge Press, 2020) received an Outstanding Achievement Award from the Wisconsin Library Association. Future releases include HARD LIFE, HARD LOVE (Dancing Girl Press, forthcoming 2022), THE YELLOW TOOTHBRUSH (Two Shrews Press, forthcoming 2022), and MESSENGERS OF THE GODS (Cornerstone Press, 2022).

An avid ballroom dancer, she believes in the power of dark chocolate, deep sleep, and red lipstick.

The Backstory

Born to an Irish nurse and German farmer, Kathryn grew up in a farmhouse at the end of a half-mile gravel drive with seven siblings and assorted dairy cows, beef cattle, turkeys, chickens, pigs, cats, dogs, and her brothers' pet rabbits. She rode a bus seventeen miles to high school and studied all the way there and back.

After that, wanderlust took her to four colleges and waiting tables in Vermont and Switzerland. She worked as a nurse in a Greenwich Village Nursing Home, a hospital in Juneau, AK, a Girl Scout camp on the Potomac, and Johns Hopkins intensive care. Other ventures included newspaper columnist, stage performer, and OB nurse-manager in WI.

Awards & Honors

Wisconsin People & Ideas Poetry Honorable Mention for \"Liminal,\" 2021
Hal Prize in Fiction, Winner for \"Yes, No, I Don’t Know,\" 2020
Hal Prize in Poetry, Winner for “Daytona Beach at Dusk,” 2020
Wisconsin People & Ideas Poetry, Second Place Winner for \"Sister,\" 2020
Lorine Niedecker Poetry Award, 2018
Chautauqua Poetry Contest, Finalist for \"For The Eighth-Grade Girl Writing Love Lyrics\"
Wisconsin People & Ideas Fiction Winner for \"Stones,\" 2015
Wisconsin People & Ideas Poetry, Honorable Mention for \"Heaven,\" 2014
Talking Writing Flash Fiction, Finalist for \"Sure,\" 2013
Wisconsin People & Ideas Short Story Third Place Winner for \"Miles,\" 2011
Wisconsin People & Ideas Poetry Finalist for \"On Being a Farm Kid,\" 2007
Marjorie J. Wilson Award, Finalist for \"Freedom Fighters,\" 2006
Glimmer Train's Very Short Fiction, Finalist for \"FRANCE,\" Winter 2003/2004
Glimmer Train's Very Short Fiction, Finalist for \"The Dresser\"

Readings, Interviews, & Press

Interview, The Breakfast Club, WCUB, 980 AM
Poet Kathryn Gahl in conversation with Joe Vanden Avond, Funeralmaker & Grief-Shaper, Lion's Mouth Bookstore Crowdcast, Oct 2020
Fighting for Nora. Postpartum Psychosis Through the Eyes of a Mother and an Advocate, Mom & Mind Podcast, Episode 171, Mar 2020
Hybrid Storytelling And You (w/BJ Hollars, Tara Pohlkotte, & Kathryn Gahl) , Serious Fun Podcast, Episode 17, May 2018
Continuation: Kathryn 'Voices of our Mental Health Community', Storycatchers, May 2017
Live Reading of \"Stones\", Wisconsin Book Festival 2015
Live Reading of \"Miles\", Wisconsin Book Festival 2011

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Seven years ago writer, mom, and oma Kathryn Gahl found herself on a train she didn’t want to be on, with a ticket she didn’t buy. The Yellow Toothbrush is her journey of mercy. From her daughter’s father’s mother, pregnant in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands, to falling in love with her daughter’s father in Greenwich Village in the 70s, to raising her daughter in a farmhouse with a garden in Wisconsin, to visiting her daughter in prison and what happens after that, Gahl connects the dots of trauma and shows us over and over again the light of love and not giving up.

","subheading":"A Memoir, Two Shrews Press, forthcoming 2022","title":"The Yellow Toothbrush"},"assets":{"coverPhoto":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/wild-ink-pages-prod.appspot.com/o/user-content%2F-Me1Mgq4DNoYD7j3SvS-%2FTYTB_Greyoutline-01_1659940123152.jpg?alt=media&token=4b87093d-0996-4a9f-9c5d-fd34f4df9cf8"},"purchase":{"custombookstore1Link":"https://www.twoshrewspress.com/our-catalog/lbqm7lhvwjkzvhnd2tt86zgook56jy","custombookstore1Name":"Preorder at Two Shrews Press"},"schedule":{"draft":false},"products":[],"id":"eaWwGEnlIpmgoimmGlIs7","awards":{},"meta":{},"reviews":{}},{"about":{"subheading":"Dancing Girl Press, forthcoming ","title":"Hard Life, Hard Love"},"assets":{"coverPhoto":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/wild-ink-pages-prod.appspot.com/o/user-content%2F-Me1Mgq4DNoYD7j3SvS-%2FAuthor%20Photo%20300x300%20(8)_1634060950003.png?alt=media&token=f2e143ec-9477-4472-8810-2668c1aa8a5a"},"schedule":{"draft":true},"products":[],"id":"qQ5fa7rwHlyooCIrOcJIH","awards":{},"meta":{},"purchase":{},"reviews":{}},{"about":{"description":"

Moving and mysterious, these poems have such a nice beat, you can dance to them--even if you have two left feet.

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Pre-Sales Feb 15-Apr 21

","subheading":"Cornerstone Press, 2022","title":"Messengers of the Gods: New & Select Poems "},"assets":{"coverPhoto":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/wild-ink-pages-prod.appspot.com/o/user-content%2F-Me1Mgq4DNoYD7j3SvS-%2FMessengers%20of%20the%20Gods_%20jpg%20cover_1645161180917.jpg?alt=media&token=a982b05e-1194-4bb8-847d-10ed7b7ec67a"},"purchase":{"custombookstore1Link":"https://www.uwsp.edu/english/cornerstone/Pages/BOOKS.aspx","custombookstore1Name":"Cornerstone Press"},"reviews":{"content":""},"schedule":{"draft":false,"publishDate":"2022-04-21T00:00:00.000Z"},"products":[],"id":"kt7XcpZ3d2DWBdn0nJWDJ","awards":{},"meta":{}},{"about":{"description":"

$\"\"$ Kathryn Gahl’s THE VELOCITY OF LOVE is a poetic memoir about wonder, loss, and longing. Kathryn’s magic lies in transforming unimaginable grief into everlasting grace.

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","subheading":"","title":"The Velocity of Love"},"assets":{"coverPhoto":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/wild-ink-pages-prod.appspot.com/o/user-content%2F-Me1Mgq4DNoYD7j3SvS-%2Fvol%20550_1629949687577.png?alt=media&token=3cc4a2b4-57e7-4156-9002-3bf92095cc02"},"awards":{"content":"Outstanding Achievement Award\nThe Wisconsin Library Association 2021"},"purchase":{"amazonLink":"https://www.amazon.com/Velocity-Love-Kathryn-Gahl/dp/1952526000/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=the+velocity+of+love&qid=1625804770&sr=8-1","barnesandnobleLink":"https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-velocity-of-love-kathryn-gahl/1137582142?ean=9781952526008","bookshopLink":"https://bookshop.org/books/the-velocity-of-love/9781952526008","custombookstore1Link":"https://lionsmouthbookstore.com/?searchtype=keyword&qs=the+velocity+of+love&qs_file=&q=h.tviewer&using_sb=status&qsb=keyword","custombookstore1Name":"Lion's Mouth Bookstore","custombookstore2Link":"https://www.watersedgepress.com/product/the-velocity-of-love/","custombookstore2Name":"Water's Edge Press"},"reviews":{"content":"

“A brave love song for a child too early lost. Prepare for a roller coaster range of emotions. And witness the love. Always the love.\"
— JULIA DAVIS, Director, Kiel Public Library

\"What I find most remarkable, then, is the courage to let this story unfold. Gahl returns to the joy of anticipation and is able to let it soar. She has the courage to let words do their work of re-creating what she anticipated as she anticipated it even though what she anticipated was not to be.\"
— Margaret Rozga, Wisconsin Poet Laureate 2019-2020, Tinderbox Poetry Journal

\"Kathryn Gahl’s latest collection of poetry ... represents an act of courage from an accomplished writer. Gahl wades into the themes of love and excruciating loss in mothers’ lives, gently bringing the reader with her. In writing this collection of poems as love notes to her deceased grandson, Kathryn Gahl speaks with a grace born of pain, of witness to the joys and struggles of her adult daughter, of her own path to recovery and of her recognition and celebration of the expansiveness of the human spirit. ... Through the alchemy of love, loss, and poetry, Gahl brings us with her to the other side of tragedy and together we ascend to that lofty patch of blue.\"
— Sylvia Cavanaugh, ZVONA i NARI, Cultural Production Cooperative

\"In these poems, Kathryn Gahl anticipates, celebrates, and commemorates a life, a very brief life, but one which nevertheless reverberates far beyond the reckoning of birthdays and calendars. The poems are intimate, rich with imagery, and though quite personal, wrestle with a very ancient and ongoing, and necessary human task—how to find words for joys and losses beyond words, or as one of the poems eloquently puts it, how 'to let in dark / and bend it light.'”
— Max Garland, Wisconsin Poet Laureate 2013-2014

\"The Velocity of Love is a love story like no other. Written in a series of poems that follow the conception, birth, and death of her grandson, Kathryn Gahl's words fly at you with the speed and pressure of excruciating love and pain. Her words are breathtaking in their depth and clarity of what it may be like to fall in love with an angel. Before there was psychotherapy, there was poetry. Kathryn's poetry takes extreme emotions and bottles them like tinctures that heal. In so doing, she gives voice to mystic truths.\"
— Brooke Laufer, Psy.D.

\"This is a breathtaking collection of bearing witness: To magic. To the ordinary. To life. To grief. To an invisible but indestructible chord of connection. Each poem sings on its own, but strung together, they dance.\"
— Tara Pohlkotte, founder, Storycatchers

\"Kathryn Gahl addresses her grandson from embryo to the eternal in poems that chronicle what their lives might have been together: boisterous, joyous discovery, voluminous love and snuggling. Spoken directly to the child, these poems are both beautiful and terrible. No woman, grandmother, mother should feel the need to write these, but there is the power of poetry, its ability to say the unsayable. \"Everywhere / I feel you: my head wobbly, / ribs imprisoned, heart seizing / at the thought of you /....\" These poems will break your heart.\"
— Karla Huston, Wisconsin Poet Laureate 2017-2018

\"Kathryn Gahl's The Velocity of Love is a rollercoaster read - the slow rise with a gorgeous view, the foreboding pause at the top, and then the unbearable plummet. These poems are both ethereal and meaty, beautiful renderings of a terrible experience. A genuine wow.\"
— Cathryn Cofell, author of Stick Figure With Skirt

\"The Velocity of Love is a balm in Gilead which Kathryn Gahl delivers in a concise language of everyday life. Gahl unflinchingly carries us with her through a crucible of loss, which ultimately reveals itself to be a pathway of love-a love which forges a universalizing wholeness of being. Gahl invites the reader in with 'the small of me in the arc of you,' and 'Be beautiful. / Be fierce. / Be anything but mad.' With a clarity of vision, such as 'how we hold our / head to joy / because we have seen / another side,' Gahl shows us how to 'favor circles over straight lines' and embrace life's gifts-'such a fine beat / I shall dance to it.'\"
— Sylvia Cavanaugh, author of Icarus: An Anthropology of Addiction

"},"schedule":{"publishDate":"2020-08-26T00:00:00.000Z"},"products":[],"id":"mKc9o38JGcyPifev8krE","meta":{}},{"about":{"description":"

A preview of the title poem from the collection...

Life Drawing Class

She offers
\nherself up, nude
\nNervous, curious
\nbroke.
\nA pretense
\nof grace
\nAs the pose is set
\ndenial of
\nA ripple of chill
\nacross her clavicles
\nSpasm in the great toe
\nand down the
\nKnotty rope astride
\nthe spine
\nA siren while
\nartists gaze
\nIn the name of art
\namazed by the strange
\nAnd wild thing where
\nbogs and shapes
\nAnd coastlines form
\na pool of light
\nOn her full exposure
\na shimmer
\nOnly she knows
\nas shiver
\nWhen she holds
\nstock-still
\nRecalling love
\nleft in the marrow
\nShadows and bold lines
\nfor shoulders
\nHolding up hope
\ntreasured breasts
\nThat fed another
\nand a belly
\nOf striations and
\ntextured
\nGrooves
\nthe lived-in look
\nOf where
\nher babies grew.

","moreInfo":"

","title":"Life Drawing Class"},"assets":{"coverPhoto":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/wild-ink-pages-prod.appspot.com/o/user-content%2F-Me1Mgq4DNoYD7j3SvS-%2Fldc%20550_1629949672188.png?alt=media&token=bc501584-041b-4e98-8c0d-452c09449cb9"},"purchase":{"custombookstore1Link":"https://lionsmouthbookstore.com/?searchtype=keyword&qs=kathryn+Gahl&qs_file=&q=h.tviewer&using_sb=status&qsb=keyword","custombookstore1Name":"Lion's Mouth Bookstore"},"reviews":{"content":"

\"The graceful poems in Kathryn Gahl’s new collection titled LIFE DRAWING CLASS are an undeniable pleasure to read. Skillfully crafted, they reveal a firm control of pace, color and tone, taking the reader on an impressionistic journey through a high-risk world–from the poet’s girlhood to her coming-of-age in uneasy times, through marriage, motherhood, bereavement–and finally coming to rest at a point in mid-life marked not only by grief and loss, but also by life-affirming gain and enlightenment. The elements that Gahl consciously borrows from the visual arts–line, shape, shadow and light–are all realized here with delicacy and considerable passion, ‘recalling love/left in the marrow.'”
— Marilyn L. Taylor, Wisconsin Poet Laureate

“Art, even poetry, has its stars and character actors, both of whom essentially mirror themselves. However, there is no type-casting Kathryn Gahl, as LIFE DRAWING CLASS, this, her first collection, attests, with no two poems quite alike, each having assumed the mental of truth for the moment. Readers familiar with Walter Pater’s ‘To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life’ will discover a kindred spirit here, the difference being never in the degree of energy the poet projects but in the many roles she assumes from sometimes sassy farm girl to savvy and sophisticated sensibility.”
— Karl Elder, author of Gilgamesh at the Bellagio

\"...the colorful Zystra watercolors that coordinate with her poems to provide us line (e.g.,farm kid, sexual experience), shape (e.g, why a poet), shadow (e.g., harsh criticism), and light (e.g, the answer to what/how a person chooses artistic expression).\"
— Russell Gardner, Jr. for Verse Wisconsin

"},"schedule":{"publishDate":"2009-04-01T00:00:00.000Z"},"products":[],"id":"q1uJOuNuCfhQU8Ub09NRa","awards":{},"meta":{}}],"contact":{"content":"

$\"\"$

I'd love to hear from you!

Drop me an email using the contact form below.

You can also connect with me on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Goodreads.

","email":"kathryngahl@gmail.com"},"customPages":[{"about":{"content":"

Books

The Yellow Toothbrush
Two Shrews Press, forthcoming

Hard Life, Hard Love
Dancing Girl Press, forthcoming

Messengers of the Gods: New & Select Poems
Cornerstone Press, 2022

The Velocity of Love
Outstanding Achievement Award, WI Library Association 2021
Water's Edge Press, 2020

Life Drawing Class
The Cottage Corollary, 2009

$\"\"$ Fiction

Yes, No, I Don't Know
The Hal Prize for Fiction, 2020

Fair
Talking Writing, 2015

Stones
Third Place for Fiction, Wisconsin People & Ideas, 2015

The Green Bay
The Sketchbook Project, 2014

Lucky Ducky Day
The Sketchbook Project, 2013

Sure
Finalist in Flash Fiction, Talking Writing, 2013

Miles
Third Place for Short Stories, Wisconsin People & Ideas, 2011

The Dresser
Finalist for Very Short Fiction, Glimmer Train

Dancer
The Notre Dame Review, Number 21, 2006

FRANCE
Finalist for Very Short Fiction, Glimmer Train, Winter 2003/2004

Poetry

Daytona Beach at Dusk
The Hal Prize in Poetry, 2020

Sister
Second Place in Poetry, Wisconsin People & Ideas, 2020

Slow Dancing
Portage Magazine, 2019

Almond Joy
The Literary Underground, 2019

40
New Millennium Writings, 2018

The Dying Farmer
Honorable Mention in Poetry, Wisconsin People & Ideas, 2018

My Mother's Kitchen
Honorable Mention in Poetry, Wisconsin People & Ideas, 2017

The Mechanic's Wife
Amarillo Bay, 2015

Prayer for the Hairdresser
Amarillo Bay, 2015

Heaven
Honorable Mention, Wisconsin People & Ideas, 2014

Because of the Cherry Chocolate Cake, Here is Advice for My Grandson
The Summerset Review, 2013

For the Eighth-Grade Girl Writing Love Lyrics
Finalist, Chautauqua Poetry Contest

The Reason Nurses Write Mostly Poetry
A Call to Nursing: Nurses' Stories about Challenge and Commitment, Anthology, Kaplan Trade, 2009

On Being a Farm Kid
Finalist, Wisconsin People & Ideas, 2007

Freedom Fighters
Marjorie J. Wilson Award Finalist
Margie, 2006

Orange
Green Hill Literary Lantern, Volume XVI. 2005

Storytelling

The Trouble with Ellen
Storycatchers

Voices of our Mental Health Community
Storycatchers

Intention
Woodland Pattern

","title":"Works"},"meta":{"order":1},"navigation":{"displayInNav":true},"products":[],"galleries":[],"id":"wqvBGcDtbBGKnlRmrVO","assets":{},"schedule":{}},{"about":{"content":"

Slow Dancing

When the earth started its pull
\non my father,
\nhe went, a willow would,
\nshoulders cracking,
\nknees cranky—where’s the chair—
\nunless a big band came to town
\nlaid reality at his feet
\neach ankle and toe-tapping beat
\nasked for a dance
\nand got its way, he
\nnothing but a wisp of wheat
\nable to get up the Irish
\nin my mother, took her
\nacross the floor, smoothed
\nher feathers except
\nthe morning he found her on the floor, eyes
\nglassy from a stroke,
\nhe asked for one more
\ndance and she gave
\nhim a stare,
\na look of something longed for
\nor lost.

Appeared in Portage Magazine 2019

","title":"Slow Dancing"},"meta":{"order":2},"navigation":{"displayInNav":true},"schedule":{"draft":true},"products":[],"galleries":[],"id":"db5Lra2AsLbeon2MCfKq","assets":{}},{"about":{"content":"

Because of that
\nCherry Chocolate Cake,
\nHere is Advice
\nfor My Grandson

\nI bought one
\nbig fat slice
\nof cake yesterday
\nat Siebkens
\nfor your Grandpa

and when I got
\nhome
\nI ate half of it.

Today I must admit
\nI ate
\nthe other half.

People
\nbetray one
\nanother.

I thought you should know.

Appeared in The Summerset Review, 2013

","title":"Because of that"},"meta":{"order":3},"navigation":{"displayInNav":true},"schedule":{"draft":true},"products":[],"galleries":[],"id":"jrbmuKJUUPKmLTkCDN8SQ","assets":{}},{"about":{"content":"

On Being A Farm Kid

Finalist, Wisconsin People & Ideas Poetry Contest, 2007

From six to thirteen, Mama drives you to school
\nwith siblings banging lunch buckets, calling shotgun.
\nFrom fourteen to eighteen, you’re riding a yellow bus
\nof future farmers, homemakers, Marlboro men.

Who can recall their faces, the one who was gay,
\nthe aromatic ones straight from milking
\nor slopping hogs? But you leave them
\nfor mountain climbing, theater, jazz.

Perspective doesn’t know where you live yet,
\nonly advertisers, the wallet starting to bulge
\nwith memberships and plastic, promises of better
\nliving through chemistry and mortgages—

you can’t Just Say No. At the travel agency,
\nyou peruse how wild turkeys poke in the plowed
\nland, a skunk labors up and over each furrow,
\nand shadows lengthen over white-tailed does.

Rural Route One: a travel destination you think
\nunique and beautiful and fabulous. In the glossy,
\nlight beckons a road with no end. Dutch elms
\nlook fake, too tall, yet the canopy waves and

in the distance, your father walks toward you,
\nknuckles swollen, hands full of arrowheads.
\nLook what I found, he says, winded
\nfrom plowing, eyes wise, all of him avowed

to leave the earth the way he found it.

","title":"On Being A Farm Kid"},"meta":{"order":4},"navigation":{"displayInNav":true},"schedule":{"draft":true},"products":[],"galleries":[],"id":"wRuAAHjlTlpeV1Edxjk8l","assets":{}},{"about":{"content":"

Freedom Fighters

They are coming.
\nAnd they are young.

They are yellow and red,
\nwhite and pale.
\nThey are black.

Blue.
\nAnd they are coming.

They are green as olives,
\nadding their numbers,
\nsubtracting their numbers.

They are gung ho.
\nAnd they are coming.

They are brown as nuts.
\nThey are multiplying,
\nsubdividing.

They are young.
\nAnd they are coming
\nhome, one piece at a time.

Finalist for 2006 Marjorie J. Wilson Award
\nAppeared in Margie, 2006

","title":"Freedom Fighters"},"meta":{"order":5},"navigation":{"displayInNav":true},"schedule":{"draft":true},"products":[],"galleries":[],"id":"3yke0fV6Szd01o2S8Oz8O","assets":{}},{"about":{"content":"

The Dresser

The dresser was the hardest. Dad tried for the first time six months after the choir sang Amazing Grace for my 39-year-old mother with a green thumb and a blown aneurysm behind her green eyes. He opened the bottom drawer where her turtlenecks lay like outdated eggs. But instead of putting them in the Goodwill box, he slammed the drawer shut with his pitching arm and then gave it a good kick with his steel-toed boot. He went out to his engine repair shop, silenced. At supper he finally spoke: guess there’s no hurry. But he was lying. The sooner he cleaned out Mom’s dresser, the sooner he would clean out Mom’s dresser. It seemed so simple, and so complicated, to me, a 14-year-old boy, their only son, only kid.

A couple of months later, he fortified himself--by fasting. He liked to feel hungry, close to the bone, an attempt to get closer to what he was feeling. Other people (mostly Catholics), thought calories cured sadness. He went at the dresser project the second time on a Sunday, when Pete’s Repair was closed and he had nothing on his mind but Mom. He approached the job with all the heft of a man with a sledgehammer taking down a cement silo. Lift, whack, slap. Chisel away at the silo until it tipped and then run like hell before it crashed. Now, in one fell motion, he slapped everything from the bottom drawer into the big cardboard box destined for those less fortunate. Lift, whack, slap. The middle drawer of sweaters was taken out. Besides, there was no daughter to keep this stuff for, and the idea of granddaughter never entered his mind. Or mine.

By now Dad had made it to the top and final drawer; he was on a roll. He opened that drawer and padded, push-up mounds of flesh looked up at him. Or so it must have seemed to stare at Mom’s bras, ready to prance and dance, posed as they were next to neatly folded rows of slips and panties. All the colors of the rainbow were in there, I swear. I mean, I had never looked in there before. Why would I? What once was hush-hush and personal now, to me, felt gruesome and creepy, especially since I had never seen my mother naked or even half-naked. She was very private and very pretty. But I sensed what fun she might have had selecting her secret things. All that finery--was that what they called it? Oh, lingerie, that’s what it was, lingerie: panties and dainties, slips and strapless, clinging and lingering, slinking, longing for sunshine or moonbeams, all that energy storied beneath sweaters or slacks or skirts, waiting. Just waiting.

Dad was in a trance staring at that top drawer. I saw a lifetime of love pass over his face like a front moving in: the pressure drops, and then, bam, the thunderstorm. My father stood there, bracing himself with two hands on the open drawer, blubbering.

“Men don’t cry,” he said.

“Right,” I said.

“They can’t,” he said. He studied drawer’s dovetail corner. “It’s not right.”

“Or something,” I chimed in, feeling any minute lightning would strike my chest. Count the number of seconds between the lightning and the thunder and you know how far away the storm is.

“Women do the crying,” Dad said. I nodded and began to count. By now his face was red and wide as a ripe tomato, splitting seeds and phlegm into the drawer. When he finally turned on the waterworks, I knew it was for both of them, for all three of us. Normally, I would have pitched in, but someone had to be the man. And I was, for the next fifteen minutes until Dad turned off the spigot faster than he had turned it on. He looked at the Goodwill box, took on a farmer blue handkerchief, and blew his nose, hard. Then, without a word, he criss-crossed the flaps of the big box into a kind of square knot.

I don’t know how long that top drawer kept its fullness. Maybe he never threw any of it out. I never saw him rummage in there again and I never looked. Maybe he put the top drawer’s contents up in the garage, in the rafters, along with Mom’s Raleigh Retroglide Seven-AL bicycle. It was a three-speed with hand brakes and white-walled balloon tires. Last time I went home, the bicycle was still hanging upside down, same place all these decades. I remembered how she rode that bike while I rode my Schwinn. We used to take the country roads like we had wings. Least that’s how I remember it because my brain laid down genuine, copper-wire connections about those rides. And then there were other things that were there, that once were so close, that have frayed. I guess that’s why you can spend the rest of your life pulling wire, remodeling and upgrading, and wondering, quite frankly, how the hell all of it happened.

Finalist, Glimmer Train Very Short Fiction Competition

","title":"The Dresser"},"meta":{"order":6},"navigation":{"displayInNav":true},"schedule":{"draft":true},"products":[],"galleries":[],"id":"n3N0en9MGVArID6bD0k","assets":{}},{"about":{"content":"

Dancer

After Carson Miller hugged the dance hall bar the whole evening, drinking, chuckling behind designer sunglasses, he took my hand. “What a dancer,” he said, “a really good dancer. I watched you the whole night.” I replied to AM radio’s popular slow talker with a polite thank-you. Then he repeated himself and I repeated myself and there we paused, hands cocooned, smiles frozen as overhead halogens came up, and a disc jockey dismantled amplifiers and stacks of CDs.

Five hours earlier, Carson had spoken on Trying Times in Therapy for our Communication Disorders Benefit. He retold how he overcame stuttering. He exaggerated unusual body movements with prolongations (lllllike this). Then he clinked away the rest of the evening with bourbon on ice, fielding questions from other barflies about MILLER AFTER MIDNITE, his statewide show for third-shifters and insomniacs.

He had nodded to me earlier in the evening when I snatched some napkins from the bar, blotted my face and neck, caught my breath, and raced back to a vast maple floor. At first I thought he wanted to dance with me. That nod, the way he rolled one shoulder, keyed me up. I was a heavyweight, a size 16 despite diet pills, counseling and calorie counts. Cha-cha, fox trot, or mambo transformed me to a lightweight, though, a dancing queen reveling to Mony, Mony and Scarborough Fair. Whether jitterbugging or waltzing, I forgot I preserved fat as a national treasure, fat as so-called protective coating. On the dance floor I forgot I was thirty-five and single, a childless speech therapist with a way with kids. When dancing, I said screw it to biological clocks, research papers, and my refrigerator magnet--you can teach your body to think thin. I was old enough to know I could teach someone else easier than myself.

Now, in pearly blue light, Carson studied my stationary body, a plumpkin in an era of gaunt cheeks and protruding collarbones. Embarrassed, I wanted to be far from him, content with his electrifying praise. I knew how these things went, how they played out or didn’t play out. I had a 15-year history with cool guys like him; they liked my dimples but saw sister material, not girlfriend material. A haze of smoke and dust hung in the air. There were whiffs of spilled beer and sweat and, for the chosen few, an aura of sex. The crowd wandered out, chattering and backslapping. One kid stammered, for real, not forever, I hoped. Carson continued to hold my hand even though several parents approached him, thanks for coming up from Milwaukee, you’re a great success story. My pleasure, he said with a big smile, it was grand, nice little town. On the radio dial his voice overlapped hard-edged cynicism with the little boy he must have been--intent, happy, lost in play. Now I noticed how that voice belied his physical self: mid-forties, five feet ten, an oval face with acne scars. He appeared shy and boyish in wrinkled khakis, white polo, and a Norwegian fisherman’s hat. The last admiring stragglers filtered by, and finally, he released my hand, took a step back.

A nimbus of light fell on his canvas sneakers, messy and chic. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my crazy friend, Roxie, give a thumbs-up. Roxie was always having a sense, looking for a sign. Evidently the spirits had moved her again. Later, she would calculate where my sun and moon were that night and which sign of the zodiac was rising as explanation for what happened. Carson cocked his head toward me, breaking my line of sight to Roxie. “W-w-what’s your n-name?”

I liked his ability to poke fun at himself. “Sarah,” I said, “with an H.” The need to mention “H” should have been a major clue to my self-deception. He absorbed my answer, analyzed it. His body was lean, soft--both willing and asking--but tired, mostly tired. I grasped my tank top and waffled it. “Sorry, I’m boiling over.” Deodorant goo stuck to my armpits and my underwire dug in.

He removed his hat with aplomb, revealing a sun-blotched forehead with deep lines and thinning hair the color of sand. He jiggled his glass, downed the last bourbon. “Boiling? How about a stroll?” he asked with a stammer. “A cool-down stroll?”

I didn’t answer. My ’92 Honda with 125,000 miles on it was in the parking lot. It was one a.m. I taught Sunday School tomorrow morning, then services, then a parish council meeting. He put up his fists. “You gonna make me fight for it?” I recognized the reference; he’d fist-fought kids who teased him. I myself had withdrawn to reading--with a double chocolate Blizzard. Not only was I a bookworm; I was a fat bookworm. I had learned to read people in books, not real life, and so I hesitated to check my list of fictional characters, see what they’d do. Before I could answer, he said, “What do you say, Miss Sarah with an H.”

“It’s Mrs.,” I said and didn’t know why. It was a lie. I seemed to raise one palm in a stop motion while waving him in with the other.

“Missus? You here alone?” His face was plain, unfettered, and his swagger off-balance. He buttoned his tatty sport coat. Lining sagged below the hem.

“Tell mister you got carried away,” he said, ironing his lips to flatten a decided smile.

And that was it. A decision. I walked next to him out of Wayside Inn’s big dance hall into a foyer with ‘fifties wood-paneled walls, yellow with thick wax and old smoke. A neon Budweiser sign buzzed on one wall, while Hamms the Beer Refreshing lit up another. He opened the solid oak door to the outside, followed me across the parking lot where he spotted a car with TERAPY vanity plates. “Look at that,” he said, tipping his hat at my Honda. “Someone can’t say their t-h’s.” He laughed, laughter that jumbled sweetness and sadness, like Ferris wheel music that swells at the bottom and fades at the top. “Where to?” he said.

I pointed toward the dimly lit sky above Stangelville where I owned a small home, a small garden, a bicycle, and my grandmother’s set of dishes. We were half a mile from town. We could have driven, then strolled. Driving would have been the sensible thing to do. But that night I did not want sensible. That night I did not want a life defined by a license plate. I wanted something--but what?

We walked. He sauntered beside me, then broke into long, wild strides for thirty yards and stopped. “Come on, slowpoke,” he yelled. Gravel jabbed my white tennies. After a night of dancing, my legs were drunk, moving the way a rollerskater’s do after the skates come off. He circled back, hands in his pockets, shuffling the balls of his feet. An owl hooted. Behind us at Wayside, car doors slammed.

“Smell that clover and quack grass,” he said, tugging air into his lungs.

“I usually smell asphalt and cement. Foundry dirt. Unless the wind shifts, then the Red Star Yeast factory makes us all believe Mama’s home, baking bread.”

“I remember that,” I said intently, now thinking about his palate, tongue, jaw and lips. “It blew over Marquette’s campus.” Air-borne calories surely compounded my freshman fifteen, I thought, recalling the nauseous mix of yeast and city bus exhaust. “Yes,” I fibbed, “what a homey smell.”

Minutes of silence settled in except for June bugs and an occasional croaking frog. Dewy air swished around us. I wondered where he grew up and thought that might be the next icebreaker when he raised his elbows and posed, awkwardly, in a forward-twinkle dance position. He said, “How’d you learn ballroom?”

“Classes. At community college.”

“What’s that? Gym class for grown-ups?”

I glanced at him, a growing sense he wanted to know me. “It was okay,” I said. “Better with a regular partner.”

His gait went floppy. “You didn’t take the mister?”

“Lenny?” The name of my father fell out of my mouth.

“Yeah, Lenny. That your husband’s name?”

“Lenny doesn’t dance.”

“What does he do?”

“Construction. He works construction.” My mind darted to Peter, my oldest brother who worked construction. Carson better not ask anymore. Not only was my family not that big, there was nothing wrong with them. No dysfunction, no trouble. Nothing for good stories on night walks with a man. My usual mantalk involved fund-raisers, an ice-sculpture committee, or careful conversations with a father of a child with a lateral lisp, or a dad heartbroken over his son’s verbal apraxia.

“So who was your dance partner?”

“Other singles, a mixture of doozers and dorks. Even husbands required to take turns because Brian, our instructor, said it benefited everyone.”

“Brian was right. It worked on you.” He patted his back pocket, like he couldn’t remember where he put his wallet or keys. Or, address book. “I never learned to dance,” he said. “That’s why I’m glued on good dancers like you.” Glued. I could feel it, a sturdy, long-lasting bond. A little voice inside me said: from now on go for the banana, skip the caramel corn. Yet another voice said: food is safer than being dumped again.

We walked with a dense slow wind behind us. We came up to the lily-white sign that read Stangelville. And underneath that, in smaller letters, Population 1183. “How’d the name get this town?” He smiled at himself. His radio success came from a silver tongue and quick thinking, though he surely used that line before. I responded with a polite exactly. We walked another eight hundred feet to the first sidewalk, with old-fashioned molded lampposts. Honey pot light radiated from carved, glass bowls. The streets were deserted with our one cop predictably parked at the edge of town to snare an OWI or two after the dance. Sweat crystallized between my breasts.

I relaxed, ran my fingers through my hair. “I’m a mess,” I said. He was supposed to say something, something complimentary. Instead he rattled night air into his nostrils with exaggeration. He held that breath and then blew out a throaty treble. He took off his Howard Stern sunglasses and tucked them in the sport coat. Next he removed the sport coat and flung it over his shoulder. Without the glasses and padded shoulders, he almost lost his status. He smelled of Giorgio Armani and cool mints and Wayside’s fried chicken, cigarettes and cigars.

“Talk to me, Sarah. About Stangelville. About yourself. Really about yourself.”

I didn’t tell him about my biological clock or boxes of Oprah Magazine. I told him about four brothers, a100-acre dairy farm with a long gravel driveway, how I grew up playing outfield and swishing hockey sticks, how I drove a tractor and baled hay. I told him now I traveled the entire rural district from school to school, the same route every week. I told him I loved kids. I didn’t tell him my bathroom curtains and towels were color-coordinated beige. He listened attentively, then said, “And Lenny?”

I balled up my hands and dug my knuckles into my hips. Then I twisted my head toward him and hunched one shoulder. “Do you have any lies?”

He imitated a fisherman sizing up the fish that got away. “The lies no one catches get bigger. Look, let’s not let Lenny or other ghosts ruin this night. My whole life, all I ever wanted besides sluts and whores was . . .” He paused.

“Yes?” My eyelid twitched, an involuntary tic that appeared when I got excited.

“Funny. I can’t even finish that sentence.” He scooped up a few pieces of gravel. “In my business, it’s mostly loose women who come on to me. Bitchy ones with fake boobs, all ages. They give. I take.” He pitched a pebble. “Here I am, baring my soul.”

To a real woman, I wanted to say. I imagined his address book scribbled with Nicoles and Tanyas, svelte women with sharp yellow hair and flawless faces, area codes in California or the Carolinas, women who wanted him but couldn’t keep him like I would, simply and honestly, no feminist agendas. He would fondle me at the stove, goulash would simmer while we made love on the table or window seat or on the stairs. Afterward he would wolf down the meal and then do me again.

Despite my musings, we seemed disparate, though. I craved closeness; he favored aloofness. He seemed worldly; I was small-town. Still, we might balance. We entered Orchard Road where white picket fences bordered both small clapboards and large Victorians. The night smelled of peonies and roses. “Small towns make me realize,” he said, “even here, I belong to the public.”

“Of course you do. You talk public all night long. The public loves you.”

“No,” he said. “I belong to the public because I’ve never belonged to anyone else. I’m adopted, always lived with someone else’s ideas about myself. I’m anonymous. It’s all I know.” We walked past a neat little clapboard with wrap-around porch and suspended wicker swing. At the sight of it he meandered up the front walk, perhaps reminded of some place. “Let’s swing,” he said.

“Jitterbug or Lindy?”

“Can’t dance, remember?”

Of course I remembered. It was just that the swing he wanted to swing on belonged to my Granny Elsa who at this hour slept, hearing aids on her bedside table. Many childhood evenings I sat on Granny’s porch swing in jammies, eating homemade peanut butter cookies before bed. I spent two weeks with her every summer, played hopscotch and roller-skated on sidewalks, bicycled on paved village streets. It was a sign that he had picked Granny’s swing. A sign, Roxie would affirm.

I wanted to teach him to dance. I wanted a regular dance partner, a companion. We climbed ten porch steps. A floorboard creaked. Subtle lamplight fell on the white wicker swing. We sat down. He pushed off. We lifted our feet and swayed behind a see-through hedge of Japanese yew trees at the porch’s edge. A car of teenagers crawled by, flicking red-tipped cigarettes to the beat of a thumping bass, or the beat of their groins. A harried man walked a black Labrador who bucked the leash. Across the street, widowed Mrs. Schmidt clicked on her bathroom light. We watched her shadow advance and recede about the room until the light went out, her entire two-story brick Georgian went dark, and the huge elm in her front yard was no longer back-lit. And then it was true night, luminous and unchained. When the swing slowed, he pumped it. “I feel eighteen,” I said.

“Me too.” He lifted his hand and traced a vein. “Rivers of life or rivers of life?”

“Accents and punctuation are easy,” I said. “Trouble starts with metabolic breathing and emotional vocalization.” I tagged on a nervous little laugh, my signature. Right now I didn’t give a damn about fricatives, labiodentals or sibilants. Unless he had kids who needed me. Unless he needed me. Had he been married? How many times? He seemed ungrounded, wounded. I waited, but he didn’t put a move on me.

“Why talk radio?” I said.

“Why speech therapy? Why dance? Why anything?” He pumped the swing.

“Right. The sooner you realize life’s an act, the better you get along,” I said, surprised by my own bitterness. We seemed to be on an airplane, buckled into time for emotional truths. I leaned forward and pressed my cheek to his. There was a tingling sensation from his four o’clock shadow.

“You’re sweet,” he said and placed his palm on my Stove Top thigh. Warmth seeped through my moody blue skirt. Granny’s swing swung, allowing a huge lapse of silence. Clouds fingered their way across the moon’s surface and disappeared, leaving a shiny, white saucer alone in the dark wide sky. I pushed my nose into the hollow of his neck.

“That’s nice,” he said. I ran my lips up and down his neck. I smelled him in a heady, close breeze, a hint of clove and sandalwood. He slowed the swing, fondled one breast. “Stop me,” he said bashfully. I stood up and he paused the swing. I angled between his legs and laced my fingers with his. Streetlight drizzled over him and when he lifted his face to look at me, I saw his eyes, bluebird-blue. I pulled him off the swing and led him to the other side of the porch where I picked up Granny’s homemade lap quilt. Without a word, we went down the stairs into the side yard of poplars, lilacs and roses. I opened the quilt and tossed it on the damp grass. He took off his hat, placed it on my head and bent to untie my tennies. Then, he rose. He rested his right hand on his hip, held his left hand up to hold an imaginary partner.

“Something easy,” he beamed. He shuffled a bit and kicked off his sneakers.

Waltz, I thought, tremulous. I formed my right hand into oath position and with three fingers tapped daa-da-da, daa-da-da on his polo shirt. “You need to feel the rhythm,” I said. “Count one-two-three, one-two-three.” I pressed myself to him. Our arms butterflied open. I continued to count one-two-three, one-two-three and took him with me into the forward box step. With calm regard, he followed me in the soundless dance. Each barefoot step glided, airborne and unbroken, until we dropped to the quilt.

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For The Eighth-Grade Girl Writing Love Lyrics

There is a line you will cross
\nin the ninth grade or the tenth
\nquick slip of judgment, addling after
\nThe Boyboy you wrote about in eighth grade. That
\nboy or a different boy will stir you if you
\nlet him tell you what you want to believe. Study his
\nrhythms and those of the agent, coach, or music
\nmarketer telling you how to dress, who you ought
\nto be between the measures before your body
\nbecomes someone else's body
\nnot the bright-eyed blessed and
\ntesty one you need for your first album
\nand all the ones thereafter

","title":"For The Eighth"},"meta":{"order":8},"navigation":{"displayInNav":true},"schedule":{"draft":true},"products":[],"galleries":[],"id":"bLXGobyITR2uZ07aFx4dA","assets":{}},{"about":{"content":"

Orange

for Frank O’Hara

One day I am thinking of
\nSchool: The Art Students League,
\nI write a line about the halls. I have
\nnever seen the halls of the League. So
\nI write about the windows, the mortar,
\nthe staircases. I cover the stairs with
\ncigarettes. Days go by. More cigarettes.
\nI am a real smoker. Suddenly it is
\n1970 and I have been there seven years.
\nI am painting. I am winning scholarships.
\nMy teacher Edward Laning gets
\nexhibitions. I get more paint. I make a
\npainting so big it comes in four wooden
\nparts. One day it ends up in an exhibition.
\nBut the gallery put the pieces together
\nwrong. I call it Puzzled. Though the
\nway it is put together, it could be
\nan orange, too.

","title":"Orange"},"meta":{"order":9},"navigation":{"displayInNav":true},"schedule":{"draft":true},"products":[],"galleries":[],"id":"bMB3oAIyrJmPqxO5afFk9","assets":{}},{"about":{"content":"

Verse Wisconsin Reviews:

LIFE DRAWING CLASS by Kathryn Gahl
SATURDAY NIGHTS AT THE CRYSTAL BALL by Sharon Auberle
CROW INK by Sharon Auberle

Reviewed by Russell Gardner, Jr.

I feel honored to have read, contemplated and now reviewed three books by two distinguished poets who frequent the Lake Michigan shore part of Wisconsin. These three sets of poems—each quite different from the other—possess distinct narratives of their own, especially Saturday Nights at the Crystal Ball by Sharon Auberle and Kathryn Gahl’s Life Drawing Class, this last named for the initial poem in the collection. That being the case and coming from a family that disapproves of plot give-aways, I’ll tread with care on dramatic storylines, except to say that they exist for both, though I will say that Saturday Nights deals with dancing as you may have already guessed, and Life Drawing gives hints of its story in Gahl’s dedication that I replicate below.

Auberle’s Crow Ink speaks to the blacks and whites of crow imagery, with a picture of one dark bird on the front in black perched on a rock (with a white moon), and one on the back in white with an even whiter moon surrounded by a textured white about the edges that to me feel like leaves. This dramatic glossy paperback cover likely fostered my buying it at the Oconomowoc Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets meeting earlier this year; likewise Saturday Nights, which features a couple dancing in a photograph that uses reversed white-dark polarities, so that we see “the negative,” a telling visual metaphor. Had I happened to view it, I doubtless would have acquired Gahl’s book too, as a reproduced watercolor of Bert Zylstra graces its cover with compelling force, especially with an artfully placed eye in the upper left corner. Gahl’s dedication reads “For Bert Zylstra (1940-2000) & for Robert, for everything.” There’s a story there, as I mentioned above, but I’ll let you discover it for yourself. Story interweaves story in Crow Ink too, as it weaves its way into your mind and heart, but more subtly, as early winter trees sometimes do the sky at night.

Both of these feeling-filled poets have lived life fully and combine visual art with well-wrought words. (Full disclosure: I double as a mixed media artist as well as poet so I may especially respond to such). Zylstra’s four additional arresting fragments of probably larger pictures divide the interior of Gahl’s book into “Line,” “Shape,” “Shadow,” and “Light.” I felt reminded of the “color-shock” concept for interpreting Rorshach cards in that Zylstra’s vivid watercolor arrested my attention, even momentarily disorganized my experience of Gahl’s poems, but, as with accommodating to a brighter light, illuminated my reading.

Auberle’s two books do most interesting things with visual imagery as well; she herself does visual art and word-work. In Saturday Night, she typically uses old photos as well as seeming replications of ‘on-the-spot notes’ done at emotional times, the tension-releasing doodlings usually ordinary but here expressive and affecting. I found these especially compelling, having had a parallel experience to the one that provides her dramatic story line. She plays with meaning, form, symbols, composition and likely color as well. The books’ interiors are limited to black, white and gray tones. Auberle even uses the same image in both collections but with slightly different treatment (compare page 53 in Saturday Nights to page 83 of Crow Ink). In the way that one learns familiar symbols in another’s life, I enjoyed the recurrent memory in a new context, all the richer for that.

Both Auberle and Gahl excel at word-imagery as well, telling of insecurities, sadness, defiance, distress, and mortality. They both employ vivid metaphor. I’ll illustrate with two quotes, first from Kathryn Gahl writing about her ‘day job’:

The reason nurses write
\nmostly poetry …

is because nurses revolve in systems,
\neach spin part of a process
\ndiagrammed like a sentence ….

… a nurse hurries to convert heart sounds

and hard words into art before the next patient
\narrives, hemorrhaging, counting on that nurse
\nto flow like a pen, bleeding for them both.

And near the end of Crow Ink, Sharon Auberle tells us “Some Things You Must Do,” including the following that remind us in Wisconsin of our beneficial boundaries on three sides by great bodies of water:

find a dead end road, a small beach
\nat the end of it, lie on sun-warmed rocks
\ndrink in the day, the lake
\nthe fine wine of a summer afternoon
\nlaugh, listen to the music
\nof beach and sky and wind …

savor …
\nfor as deep and forever as you can.

The two poets differ considerably: Gahl lives a vibrant, socially connected life, as signaled by the colorful Zystra watercolors that coordinate with her poems to provide us line (e.g.,farm kid, sexual experience), shape (e.g, why a poet), shadow (e.g., harsh criticism), and light (e.g, the answer to what/how a person chooses artistic expression). Auberle tells us her contemplative experience and shares it with us in a subtle, black-gray-white fashion, extending to us her symbol worlds familiar from meditative experience, eastern tradition, juxtapositions, and discovered art (e.g., scarrings on white birch bark from long ago penknives). Both craft words engagingly. Both fundamentally live and express their lives as artistic works, benefiting their families and acquaintances, as well as their readers.

About the Reviewer:
\nRussell Gardner, Jr. grew up on a central WI farm, lived in many states as an adult, and is back in Wisconsin. Writing poetry (and prose) since college, he also does mixed media visual art and helped originate and then coordinate the Epidemic Peace Imagery project featured in Free Verse #99/100. Gardner's poem \"\"Edgeworks Number 1\" appears in Verse Wisconsin magazine.

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LOREM IPSUM es sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Volutpat ac tincidunt vitae semper quis lectus. Consequat nisl vel pretium lectus quam id leo in. Et odio pellentesque diam volutpat commodo sed egestas egestas fringilla. Aenean vel elit scelerisque mauris pellentesque pulvinar pellentesque.

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