December 2014
I was born in Southern California in 1978. I first began writing poetry and painting while growing up in Salt Lake City, Utah where I earned my Associates of Science at Salt Lake Community College in 2001 and attended Westminster College as an English Major afterwards. I currently live in Las Vegas, Nevada. This is where I write, paint, draw, and do photography. The rich diversity of cultures and people in Vegas is an array of extremes. Every walk of life passes through this city, providing a full palette to work with as an artist and a writer.
Gamble
The energy in the air
is electric
She can feel it
Something big is going to
happen very soon
Walking into the casino
as usual,
She puts her paycheck
into the slot machines
Today could be her
lucky day
You never know,
her luck could
finally be changing
Significance
“You’re my favorite” she used to say,
looking at me through the rear view mirror.
I, in a booster seat, buckled in the back.
Favorite person, child, brother, sibling;
she never said.
I was hers. That’s all that mattered.
I would answer the telephone.
The other end of the receiver
asked what I was doin’
I would knowingly smile and ask: “Who is this?”
The voice on the other end
always replied: “It’s your favorite”.
Favorite person, child, sister, sibling;
she never said.
She was mine. That’s what mattered.
I’ve grown now and found
many things that don’t seem to matter.
The sixteen years between us didn’t matter;
but we did. We mattered. We were favorites.
Favorite people, siblings, friends;
we never said.
Only that we were.
I whisper it to her.
When she passes through the wind
and I know it matters.
Sunday Afternoon
The highway, a sanctuary
from the corrosive mundane.
Fueled tank propels;
Delivering me to quiet;
where movement stops.
Out into vast
white space; flat, sterile.
Salty ground for miles.
Emptiness;
distant background of
indefinable peaks, fading into
ocean blue sky.
Desolate, peaceful.
Eyes shut, I raise my arms.
Spinning untethered.
I am Goddess here.
In this valley of void
where a nothing can metamorphose
into anything. Everything.
I find myself;
Renewed again.
Master of my destiny.
Conqueror of life.
On a Sunday afternoon.
©2014 Catherine Cates