Mike Catalano

February 14, 2019

“Kissing the Cow Patties” by Mike CatalanoPosted by

Mike Catalano

KISSING THE COW PATTIES

for Robert Jackson

He said I lived in the city too long,
manacled to its sounds and smells,
to appreciate the silent echoes of nature.
He offered his tonic without quid pro quo:
a sylvan spread beyond the boondocks.
And the more I embodied the madness
of the multitudes, the more I yearned
for the haven of this sharecropper’s son.

Wild Canadian geese raced me to the pond
where they too, shed civilization.
The hundred head of cattle trailed me
to the top of the hill, for I
was the prodigal son, not the Pied Piper.
They forgave me with their mooing magic,
bathing me with grass-stained tongues,
and plopping poop like a baptismal ritual.

I have a lifetime pass to rekindle the kine
with their mother lode of manure anytime.
Like Adam at the dawn of creation, I
caressed their heads with family names.
I could kiss all these cow patties,
letting their sweet stench adopt me.

—from Rattle #9, Summer 1998

__________

Mike Catalano: “A transplanted Northern Californian, I have built an earth home from recycled tires and sat at the feet of the American Indian mystics. I hope my writing can capture the essence of Americana, its stories, and it’s legends.” (web)

Rattle Logo

November 16, 2017

“Lonni Little River” by Mike CatalanoPosted by

Mike Catalano

LONNI LITTLE RIVER

He could fish before he walked;
and he was more attuned to the speech
of Sockeye salmon than any human.
It surprised no Athabaskan
that his fish were hooked
before bait spanked the white rapids.
When he became one with the water
without ripple or bubble,
he petrified himself like a totem
and speared the most unruly Cohoe.
But the legend of Lonni Little River,
long after his death,
came when he snagged fish
with one hand. Some say he trained
his hand hours a day playing a game
akin to jacks. Some say he plucked a bee
from a grizzly’s paw, becoming the bear
with all its instincts.
I say he kissed the land, the water,
and all therein, never wasting his spirit,
long drained by settlers.
So the river rewarded him
as one of their own with more
than Houdini’s hands,
with a love none dare equal.

—from Rattle #11, Summer 1999
Tribute to Editors

__________

Mike Catalano: “I killed my first deer this past winter—going 65 mph in a driving rainstorm. I’m thankful to the Iowan people who helped scrape the remains from my totaled Toyota. I’ve been on a two-year sabbatical writing and researching my family’s biography. I’m happy to be writing history instead of being history, after hitting that deer.”

Rattle Logo

March 3, 2016

“The Wreck” by Mike CatalanoPosted by

Mike Catalano

THE WRECK

Bettendorf, Iowa
for David Widup

It happened with such surgical precision
before sunup on the Eisenhower Highway
that no amount of precaution could separate
car metal from deer bone at high speeds.
And yes, there were flashback enactments
of past wrecks and busted vows.
But here, hundreds of miles from friends,
I rolled over on glassy, metallic fragments
as if they were transplanted shrapnel.

I knew my femur and fibula were fractured.
Perhaps it was the potion of pain and snow
that brought me back to grade school
where bullies dunked me again and again
into an icy vat. No amount of begging then
or meditation now could undo that combustion
of terror and anger. The buck, whose truncated
torso was mere centimeters from mine,
nodded, as if the guns and traps of his day
made us blood brothers rather than enemy species.

Then, with a denouement more than an ending,
the hand of God separated the skies,
shoving aside the sleet and the wind.
Help came quickly enough for me. I couldn’t
say the same for Buck whose blood
ran like rivulets over me. Perhaps I was
the aborted sacrifice, redeemed like Isaac.
It took me a year to walk again.
Maybe we really are no different, brute beasts
at best. Or just maybe I finally forgave
my tormentors, forty years too late.

—from Rattle #17, Summer 2002

Rattle Logo