Catherine Hamrick

Immersion (poem)

image of pink, coral, and green succulent resembling the interior of a shell fish

I never toe-squished from a rocky shore To wade into a duck-and-water cover That would salvage my muddy, sidestepping soul. The Mississippi sun’s baptismal fire Plunged me into chlorined, green-tiled bliss, A state of grace fogging my plastic goggles. This daily meditation ran long and lean, Broken by 32 concrete-grazed […]

Estimated reading time: 47 seconds

Solo Duets (poem)

Autumn blazed azure and gold, And a tickling thrill stole over me; Fingers slid down the curve of my neck, Then gently squeezed my clavicle, Playing me for a brilliant fool. I swayed into his embrace; Bronze, copper, and iron notes Skittered down and up my spine, In senseless musicality. Yellow squeaked […]

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

shadow of death on a sidewalk (poem)

i took a turn under a luncheon sun for the unfurling of bearded iris flags, billows of color unwound from pencil-thin buds, petal-splashes of purple, violet, blue, and cream that I floated and then puddled into mud on flimsy pages of watercolor pads— in a class of middling women trying […]

Estimated reading time: 1 minute

The Secret to Prize-Winning Short Stories

How-to-Write-Winning-Short-Stories-book-cover-author-image

A promise begins the newly released book How to Write Winning Short Stories: “Let this be a practical little manual of tips, designed to provide accessible, actionable advice to short story writers, particularly beginning or emerging writers, who want to write short stories for adult readers.” Author Nancy Sakaduski sticks to this […]

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

Yelling at the Computer Wasted My Breath

1025px-how-does-my-garden-grow-catherinehamrick

A few days after Santa dropped by, I yelled at my computer. It. Was. Slow. I. Was. Irritated. I argued with a thing. Why? A smart friend told me to get the monkeys off my back and the chatter out of my brain. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I joined in the […]

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

My Other Blog: Random Storyteller

The Shadow of My Father’s Beard

It’s the small things, After a person is gone, That keep him alive, For a time, The things unnoticed Until they rise Out of memory’s grave. My father’s beard, Always a shadow, Even at 5 a.m., Briefly bristled my cheek, While my mother Lilted, “Rise and shine,” In the dark Of day number four […]

My Father on D-Day: Why Do You Ask This?

They made movies of our memories,

Of what they thought they were:

German mortar and exploding artillery,

The strewn wreckage

Of flipped, ripped jeeps,

Of wire,

Of bodies, whole, some with faces yet,

Of twitching pieces, arms here and legs flung there,

Of middle parts, spilling guts, oozing.

What was I thinking?

The sea foams, so does blood.

Then my hands did the thinking, and doing, on semi-automatic,

What the doctor ordered:

Stanch bleeding,

Apply dressings,

Sprinkle sulfa powder,

The lone wound antiseptic.

And dwindle the morphine—

On who has the best chance?

The hands became the machine

That patched the broken living and passed them to other hands

That stretchered them up the ramp.

To My Mother: Origami Storm

Although I previously published a version of this poem, I revised it with a certain precision—in keeping with my mom’s handiwork. A science major turned homemaker, she lived joyfully and creatively. I opened cereal boxes upside down And absently stuck them on a fridge shelf, Defying the precision strokes of my mom, The domestic engineer […]