Catherine Arra

Photo by Jennifer B. Muirhead Photography

Take Five

You slot a dime, key A-15, say
Don’t look, finger-tease the Formica table
edging the maroon sides, up three art-deco stripes
from the end, cup my hands.
Shhhh. Wait for it.

A whirring click-hiss stop. Mini speakers sizzle.
Brubeck’s “Take Five” in 5/4 vibrates our chrome stage.
A piano syncopates, a sax whirls, spins
our table, delivers swirling hot coffee, a fat slice
of Mickey’s famous apple pie à la mode to share.

Eyes still closed, you table-tap that otherworldly
beat, a prelude; driving lost
in glow light, making love in the ‘55 Chevy
convertible, up to the stillness in stars, riding rhythm

around the tunnel of that brass sax,
reed breath hot.


Tooth Fairy

Bring me the gift of loss—
baby teeth, big-girl teeth
this dead old molar, done

chewing down years, rootless,
separated from the body
surrendered to silk-sack departures—

mother, father, lovers, husbands, friends
this house, that job, the accumulations
and cost of having.

Teach me to put youth, beauty
fire, fury, gutting want
under the pillow.


I Walk the Fairview Cemetery

think about living through my death
date each year. Ask the old names:

Hiram, Moses,
Chauncey,
Garton, Harriet,
Gertrude, Elvina, Flora.

When you lived, did you feel
a shifting of sand particles,
a splintering, on that date?

How did you live in your bones
on the farm, in the factory, making
barrels, babies, money, dinner?

Did you play piano, dance, sing
in a choir, write poetry,
could you read?

Did you knit sweaters and mittens,
chop wood, hit a home run, bake the best
blue-ribbon county fair pies?

Did you believe in Jesus, the Holy Spirit,
consult a Ouija board, host séances, rock
to sleep in your favorite chair?

Did you hear my voice read your death dates
inscribed in stone and time parentheses?


About the Author

Catherine Arra is the author of four full-length poetry collections and four chapbooks. A former English and writing teacher, she now facilitates local writing groups. Her newest full-length collection, Last Evening With All the Versions of Myself, was first finalist in the 2025 Donna Wolf-Palacio Poetry Book Prize and will be published by Finishing Line Press, September 2026. Also forthcoming in 2026 are a chapbook, Perennial Cosmology, from Dancing Girl Press and an ekphrastic collection from Dos Madres Press, The Razor Tip of an Arowhead, that features poems by Arra and photographs by poet and photographer Alex Stolis. Arra lives in the Hudson Valley of upstate New York with her partner Alex Stolis and their dog Daisy. www.catherinearra.com

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