Katherine Schmidt
Something happens when you’re ten and your da says to your face that he’s going to kill himself and you know it’s on you to make sure that doesn’t happen. In art history class, you couldn’t stop thinking about the angler watching Icarus’ stupid little legs flailing in the water. But then you grew up and realized that most people are ploughmen and shepherds. Most people are art enthusiasts & don’t get mad at paintings for trying too hard to make statements about tragedy. How humanity’s gaze turns away from death and murder and fire. How we think we are hardwired to be animals stuffed into cocktail dresses saying please and thank you and yes, I’d love more wine. Most people can’t stomach the horrors occurring on roughly 57,000,000 square miles of the Earth’s land, much less in its oceans. In contrast, all 1,274.49 square inches of the Bruegel are pretty; Auden and Williams wrote pretty words, too. You get it. You still believe your da shouldn’t have died.
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Katherine Schmidt’s poetry is published in Variant Lit, Full House Literary, 3Elements Review, and elsewhere. She is the editor-in-chief of Spark to Flame and lives in Washington, D.C.