Author: Katherine West
Katherine West lives in Southwest New Mexico, near Silver City. She has written three collections of poetry: The Bone Train, Scimitar Dreams, and Riddle, as well as one novel, Lion Tamer. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Writing in a Woman's Voice, Lalitamba, Bombay Gin, New Verse News, Tanka Journal, Splash!, Eucalypt, Writers Resist, Feminine Collective and Southwest Word Fiesta. New Verse News nominated her poem And Then the Sky for a Pushcart Prize in 2019. In addition she has had poetry appear as part of art exhibitions at the Light Art Space gallery in Silver City, New Mexico, the Windsor Museum in Windsor, Colorado, and the Tombaugh Gallery in Las Cruces, New Mexico. She is also an artist.
THE MONSOON
Today we celebrate the monsoon. Will we then come to hate the monsoon? All night, I danced with him in the rain. What could it not create, the monsoon. She thought of love as flood. Was she wrong? By then it was too late. The monsoon. Clouds wear black masks Read more
THE EPSTEIN FILES
Isn’t it always and hasn’t it always been a voice answering a voice? The voice outside with its multiple morning voices of bluebird and robin and finch, the evening canticles of owls, the polyrhythms of crickets, the drone of the tanpura wind in the tops of distant trees like a Read more
WHERE SHE HAS FALLEN
Supine, she sprawls where she has fallen, not one bird calls where she has fallen. Dead grass covers her form like a shroud, an endless pall where she has fallen. The lightning-struck tree, stiff with black grief, still standing tall where she has fallen. Where is the play of green Read more
LIKE WOMEN WAVING GOOD-BYE
Trees in the wilderness, like women waving good-bye. Wind in folds of her dress, like women waving good-bye. Fire in a pile of leaves that lift one by one, like hands that cannot rest, like women waving good-bye. Pregnant sisters bleed like the leaves of fall lie against hospital walls Read more
THE WHITE GOD RISES
January 20, 2025 Behind dark mountains at dusk, the white god rises.Long after the loss of trust, the white god rises. During eclipse, they bang pans to bring the moon back.She laughs, what’s wrong with the cusp? The white god rises. Who sculpts the shape of woman, the shape of Read more
A STORM OF WOMEN
All night, she thought she heard storms, or were they just dreams? She thought she heard a voice speaking in dusty dreams. She was so sick that she could never go outside. So she planted a small garden of trusting dreams. They shared the same chain. One barked; the other Read more