Kathie Giorgio

CONTACT:
Address: 234 Brook Street, Unit 2, Waukesha, WI 53188
Email: kathie11@aol.com
Website: www.kathiegiorgio.org

BIO:
Kathie Giorgio is the author of six novels, two story collections, an essay collection, and three poetry collections. A poetry chapbook, Olivia In Five, Seven, Five; Autism In Haiku, was just released in 8/2022. Her seventh novel, Hope Always Rises, will be released in March 2023. She’s been nominated for the Pushcart Prize in fiction and poetry and awarded the Outstanding Achievement Award from the Wisconsin Library Association, the Silver Pen Award for Literary Excellence, the Pencraft Award for Literary Excellence and the Eric Hoffer Award In Fiction. Her poem “Light” won runner-up in the 2021 Rosebud Magazine Poetry Prize.  In a recent column, Jim Higgins, the books editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, listed Giorgio as one of the top 21 Wisconsin writers of the 21st century. 

PUBLICATIONS:
Olivia In Five, Seven, Five; Autism In Haiku, poetry chapbook. Published by Finishing Line Press, September 2022
No Matter Which Way You Look, There Is More To See, full-length poetry book. Published by Finishing Line Press, October 2020
When You Finally Said No, poetry chapbook. Published by Finishing Line Press, August 2019
True Light Falls In Many Forms, poetry chapbook. Published by The Main Street Rag Publishing Company, May 2016

Poetry

The House on Pine Street

My kids send me photos of their father
tearing apart the house of their childhood.
The house he and I bought together in 1987.
The house I left behind in 1997
with him in it.
The children are grown and in homes of their own.
Despite twenty-five years gone, I still somehow consider
that house mine.
I still feel Me in it. I still feel my kids.
My ex rips out the cabinets.
He rips out the counters and the floor.
He tears out the island where I used to sit every day
for breakfast
for lunch
a phone to my ear at noon on a routine call to my mother
who is no longer alive.
He rips out the pantry. On the door, there used to be
a huge calendar, to track all of the kids’ activities
and my own. Track our lives together.
He rips out the half wall between the kitchen and the living room
that half wall where I used to lean and tell him about my day
while I kept an eye on the dinner, bubbling on the stove
and the kids did their homework in their rooms.
The house, my kids say, is going to look completely different.
And I see in their eyes the Christmas stockings that hung
from the half wall
the snacks grabbed from the pantry.
Those snacks shared after school and before bed,
all three of them laughing at the kitchen table.
And I feel, as he tears apart the kitchen, that he
tears out the last vestiges of Me. Of those kids. In that house.
Who I was
in that house.
Who they were.
1532 Pine Street.
With the memories in my eyes,
reflected in my kids’ eyes,
I hug all three
and tell them again their stories.

Phosphenes

Phosphenes: Noun. The colors or the stars you see when you close your eyes.

Close. Squeeze.
The Yellow of summer after summer the sun painting you golden as you crawl in the sand as you walk as you swim as you stand ankle deep in the lake with your hands in your hair elbows cocked and hip out and you pose and Red fills you to burst in your heart in your veins flow with hope as you ask to go out with the boy six years older a man and your snarl is Red as your mother says no and you can’t and you flare and the window is open Red heats down your breasts to your belly lights your way to the bar and the Redlit back alley and you give what you have who you are what you think that he wants and he’s gone to a girl his own age a woman and Red clots and scalds and you cry in your pillow and your mother who said no braids your hair Purple stretches like puddles the good grades the class ring the gossip and the hand of a boy with Blue eyes who looks just at you and you dance the Blue starlight and you foxtrot for glory a diploma a job a wedding a layoff a baby a baby a fight there’s no money a job then a house with a yard and a dog and a cat an affair his then yours a divorce and a cancer a song at a concert an online romance a marriage a late baby who stops breathing your arms are so empty but then Paris and Greece and soft Sunday mornings hot coffee cheese danish a grave with Red roses you say goodbye to your mother and Blue slows to Black the Black streaked with Silver the moon on your face a grandchild’s gilded laughter a son’s long embrace a gold clock encased in crystal and the night you sit by the ocean the water a silk whisper a warm blanket draped over your knees
Open. Open wide.
Brilliance.