My Tiny History
Jeff Katz
…You know the mind, how it comes on the scene again
and makes tiny histories of things.
-Richard Hugo, Letter to Matthews from Barton Street Flats
There’s a snow castle on the lawn
in the suburbs outside of Cleveland.
What do you want me to say?
That I arrived there a thousand years ago
on a horse as big as a station wagon?
The shadows grow sharp & slice
through the winter trees, lost
continents of clouds drift past.
A fiddle tune starts up somewhere &
girls come looking for us, as they
have since the beginning of time. We
will take them up by the waist into
the air, begin spinning like the planets
deep in the night sky. What do you want
me to say, that we’re happy ever after?
That we take to the trees the minute
the soldiers return? We do this again
& again until we get it right.
JEFF KATZ is a former administrator & librarian at Bard College in New York’s Hudson Valley. He has also taught literature courses for undergraduates, first-year writing workshops, and literature seminars at a local correctional facility. He is the author of a chapbook, “Small Rain” (Ten Pin Press, 2004), and co-author of “So Much Secret Labor: James Wright and Translation” (Wesleyan University Press, 2025).