Casey FitzSimons. 1946-2024.
Poet. Artist. Polymath.

ReliquaryAs I enter the house, the floor
creaks over dry joists, announcing
my presence on the carpet. Memory
lurks, but hidden and harmless, last soot
settling in disintegrating weave. But my hand
on the smooth pull, the rattle as I
open the kitchen drawer, disturbs
unfinished conversations, the repose of
lapsed glances. Like the rib cage of a small saint,
the eggbeater rests in arid air, insensible
to veneration. I’m reluctant to rouse
the past it touches. Lifting this utensil now,
extricating the carrot peeler that impales it like
a lance, would stir to alertness
the indignation of neglect, might demand
engagement. Nothing here I want, I say
to the agent. My own echoes decaying
in other rooms meet the foot-scrape of grit
on porous linoleum. Okay, then, he says.

Self-Portrait (Pastel on Paper), after 2000
Catalog No. 002, “The Exacting Gaze” series
Reliquary
First published in Riding Witness, Poems 2012
First Place, Mendocino Coast Writers Conference 2014
First presented together at the Tribute & Poetry Open Mic, April 12, 2025, Half Moon Bay, CA."Casey FitzSimons was an over-educated, under-published artist and writer. Her father was a Milton scholar and she had yet to walk it off.” — from Defenestration

All literary and visual works © 1960–2024 Casey FitzSimons. Presented with permission of her estate.
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