Cat's Tongue is the latest publication from California-based writer Kathleen Winter, author of three award-winning poetry collections. Armed with wit, charm, and original imagery, she engages with incidents in her Texas youth that range from traumatic to ecstatic—strewing oilfields, deer, drug dealers, and football games in between. These poems vary widely in style and subject matter, but they share precisely crafted language and this writer's unique perspective on a central Texas childhood.
The TRP Chapbook Series
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from "Each Day a New Round of Sadness"

Islands of the Hawaiian archipelago are connected
to each other under the surface of the sea.

Under the surface of the sea something roils
like a volcano preparing to explode.

To explode sometimes suggests a solution
to the situation of constraint, ubiquitous

as fear these days, when stasis is a prize.
A prize, that is, compared to illness.

Can't wellness sink its teeth deep into me
to feel acutely as a wound?

A wound is what the dream delivers
with an image of my mother

wreathed in Hawaiian flowers—
tuberose releasing its cloying

daylong ennui.