Worrisome Creatures: Poems

By Kate Sweeney

This is a collection of the body, of the failings of history and family. The range is wide and balanced—in geography, in tenderness and trauma, in startling imagery, craft, and heart. Kate Sweeney’s work takes me within and outside myself, making both realms real and seen/felt as if for the first time. In fact, much of the collection feels like entering uncharted territory—and how intriguing to explore it!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Madville Publishing
• Release date: May 19, 2022
• ISBN: 9781948692830

Book preview

Copyright © 2022 by Kate Sweeney

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the editors and readers of the following publications in which poems in this collection have appeared:

Anomaly Literary Journal: At the Obstetrician’s Office, Why My Grandmother Reminds Me of Sylvia Plath; Best New Poets 2009 and Rattle: Death of the Hired Hand, Hiawatha, Kansas; Better Accidents: Before Moving to Florida, Brief Observations of Self, Age 25, Halloween, Kafka in the Everglades, "To Bartolomé García de Nodal, Captain of the Atocha, September 4, 1622, Tongue, Topeka Boys"; Cincinnati Review miCRo Series: Postpartum; Crab Orchard Review: An Education in Steel, Cleveland 1969; Creative Pinellas’ Art Coast Journal: Three Carrotwoods, Mistaken, Ode to My Unfriendly Neighbor; Flint Hills Review: The Map Room Bar; Foothill Journal: Dreaming of Exes, Epithalamium; Hayden’s Ferry: Two-Year Drought; New Ohio Review: Meg Francis; Poet Lore: Totem; Poetry East: On Hearing an Old Friend Works in the Mass General Burn Unit; Ragazine: Estuary, The Fiesta Queen, or a Brief History of Florida; Spoon River Poetry Review: Nerve, Swell; Sweet: A Literary Confection: Advice to a Young Son in April, The Grief Orchard; Wordriver: To Skin a Rabbit, To the Statue of Christopher Columbus, Tampa Theatre.

FIRST EDITION

Requests for permission to reprint or reuse material from this work should be sent to:

Permissions

Madville Publishing

PO Box 358

Lake Dallas, TX 75065

Author Photo: Jessica Hedges

Cover Design: Jacqueline Davis

ISBN: 978-1-948692-82-3 paperback

ISBN: 978-1-948692-83-0 ebook

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022931996

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Startle

*

Totem

Ode to My Unfriendly Neighbor

On the Feast of the Assumption

Mockingbird

At the Obstetrician’s Office

Birthday

Estuary

Postpartum

Meg Francis

Dreaming of Exes

Brief Observations of Self, Age 25

Nerve

Four O’Clock Makes Me Want to Kill You

On Hearing an Old Friend Works in the Mass General Burn Unit

Epithalamium

All Creatures, Great and Small

Joselyn, in Trump’s America

*

Birthday Poem for My Mother

Halloween

The Grief Orchard

Last Vacation with My Mother

Why My Grandmother Reminds Me of Sylvia Plath

Mistaken

Reverse Death

Family History

When I Try to Talk about You

Escalation

*

Before Moving to Florida

Three Carrotwoods

Sharks

Stingray

The Fiesta Queen, or a Brief History of Florida

Kafka in the Everglades

Masquerading

The Map Room Bar (Bucktown, Chicago)

To Bartolomé García de Nodal, Captain of the Atocha, September 4, 1622

The Statue of Christopher Columbus, Tampa Theatre

The Professor

Swell

Ballad of the