Kathryne David Gargano

a woman steps out of the ocean & begins to die

i give birth to a fever well
seafoam sick & skin /

slick / your hair cuts my tongue

i wear the water nightdress
spit up salt harbor women

in my teeth

my red red gloves /




as you love your mother’s life

take it / as i birth another mother
from my throat she crawls hands

& slick pink baby mother
i choke & the reigns say

mother mother

gorgeous tiger take her inside
i love & it’s a library i see

spines & every book cries mother 
mother & every ink between

my teeth & all the bones i eat are
mother mother blue lipped & feral




a window imagines a beautiful house

i become a box drawing outside
my portrait i am / given names

are costume bodies make note
of numbers / i imagine her

outside it’s dead inside the ceiling
begins to sink & my arms grow

weak / i hang myself a painting
of a window i see mountains & my

calves hurt / what is a woman
but a lovely peal of skylight






Kathryne David Gargano hails from the Pacific Northwest, but isn’t very good at climbing trees. She recently graduated with her MFA in Poetry from the University of Nevada – Las Vegas, and has been published in CALYX, The Fem, Indicia, and Heavy Feather Review,  among others.  Her work is forthcoming in The Colorado Review and Pittsburgh Poetry Review. You can find pictures of her three-legged pup on Instagram @peternelle3.