Umbrella
A Journal of Poetry and Kindred Prose


Catherine Rankovic’s

poems and essays have been published in The Iowa Review, The Missouri Review, River Styx, 13th Moon, Boulevard, and many other journals.

Formerly a newspaper and magazine journalist, she left that career to study literature at Syracuse University and earned an M.F.A. in poetry writing from Washington University in St. Louis.

Her book of in-depth interviews with St. Louis writers, titled Meet Me: Writers in St. Louis (Penultimate Press) publishes in 2010; she is also the author of Island Universe: Essays and Entertainments (2007), and Fierce Consent and Other Poems (2005).


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And Then It Came for Me

And then it came for me. It sent
the strangest announcementsa pinch,
a puckered nipple. There was impact:

it changed my orbit.
Yet this was a love form, a partial
embrace. It occupied
a quadrant. It required expensive
attention spans. The cells
pulled the nipple flat, then inverted it.
I tugged as if to change a channel.