Catherine Theis: California Poets Part 11, Three Poems

Catherine Theis

October 20th, 2026

California Poets: Part XI

Catherine Theis

Three Poems

Yours in the Ranks of Death

“Plague: it’s a world without women and thus without air.”

–Albert Camus

 Exquisite paper in books.

The kind rough and smooth,

yellowed with opinions—

sweet-smelling like vanilla

and cardamom toast.

They don’t use paper like this anymore.

Send no news of yourself,

send nothing at all.

You could live for centuries

undetected in this watery wilderness.

The saint who turned herself in.

The liquid route to my heart.

The indispensable sea of my own imagining.

The Living Joints

The sailor never asked what direction

for he intuitively sailed

out past the remainder

of nothingness.

I admired him for his bravery

and his blue eyes

locked in present accountings.

I admired his smoky, tattered clothes,

the hole in his cashmere sweater

right below the left armpit.

I admired his chicken stock,

slightly over salted and sedimentary

in flavor. Tortellini in brodo

better than my mother’s even,

hand delivered to my room once

the deck lanterns had been lit.

All my life

I have asked for things

sideways

at an angle, afraid

of the full-shock:

the whole gaze of you.

And so, I signed up for maritime work,

knowing the sun would warm me, and the sea

would rock me to sleep, and I could be

part of the invisible army of many.

In time, I flee from the unending

monotony of seafaring days.

Each day exactly as the last—

high adventure

but displaced from anyone,

never lasting in imprint, its conditions

destroying the score mark

upon the memory. Water

a never disaster condition.

When you eat a ripe plum,

swallow the pit.

Learn to feel its weight inside of you.

The Ruins Lesson

1

In the notebooks, one records all

the daily preoccupations with medicine,

flowers, and toilet habits. The disintegrating

cactus, veins and remains

2

of a dead mouse. House as a well-stocked ship,

a metaphor waiting to be proven false.

Like a man who steps into a bath

with a lit candle. Oh, how I longed to be,

3

him when I was a young girl.

He repeats this exercise

every night for twelve nights.

When belonging to a group resonates poor.

4

If words make no difference,

leave him—

he led a quiet life of infinite sadness.

I prefer to claim a different state,

5

to make things that seem unworthy

of this life. Celebrated in pattern,

rich hues of wander.

6

Hidden in the countryside,

a piece of red rock.

The January fragment of a mosaic.

The sharp edges burn.

My hands held the bramble prick

of a flower broomstick.

Its yellow petticoats cover

membranes as if muted

questions could be filmed.

Handheld tweezer.

Alabaster examination.

Paintings really are

mountains heaps dirt rock

piles of bones stones local

volcanic clay saffron veils.

Language uttered from rock.

Language near my mouth,

a see-through diaphanous place.

Author Bio:

Catherine Theis is the translator of Slashing Sounds (University of Chicago, 2024), the first collection of the Italian poet Jolanda Insana to be published in English. She is the author of MEDEA (Plays Inverse, 2017), an adaptation of the Euripides story. Her first book of poems is The Fraud of Good Sleep (Salt Modern Poets, 2011), followed by her chapbook, The June Cuckold, a tragedy in verse (Convulsive, 2012). Along with editors Susan McCabe and Steven Aaron Minas, Theis edited The Sound of the Past: Modernist Echoes and Incantations (Vernon Press, 2026.) Her newest collection of poems is called By a Roman (Antiphony Press, 2025).