Today’s New Verse News: HELPLESS and YOU ASK WHO I ADMIRE
HELPLESS
by Anne Harding Woodworth
Support the rescue efforts of the White Helmets.
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a prayer of sorts, Tuesday, February 7, 2023, 4:30 a.m.
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In the quiet of this early morning, he’s left our bed and walked into the hall, then to the kitchen probably to get a “swig of klim,” as he calls it. I move my foot over to his side just to feel the warmth he’s left behind. At that moment, I know how survivors in Turkey and Syria are shivering, reaching for warmth where there is none, no lingering vestige of a spouse, parent, child, no body next to them that said, “I’ll be right back.” Buildings have fallen, din deafened, and then silent, as snow passes into illicit spaces, upside down rooms, and chairs drop into cold chasms of confusion, terror, and pain with no one there to explain what has happened. This is nightmare, a woman thinks, held down in darkness between two concrete blocks with one leg bent the wrong way. I tell her I am coming with a blanket and lamp, but that too is dream and will never happen. When he comes back to bed, sweet-smelling of milk, I move closer to him for his warmth, seeking comfort and more air for those still breathing, buried deep in the rubble.
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Anne Harding Woodworth is the author of eight books of poetry and four chapbooks. Her recent collection is GENDER: Two Novellas in Verse, which was a Literary Titan Silver Award Winner. Her chapbook The Last Gun won the COG Poetry Award and was subsequently animated. Anne is a member of the Board of Governors at the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, MA, which is opening soon after two years of restoration.
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YOU ASK WHO I ADMIRE
by Katherine Smith
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I admire the bare branches of trees for reaching into the sky tinged pink by a winter dawn. I admire my student for showing up to class on this cold February morning after she was evicted from her home I admire lungs for breathing the splintered air, bare fingers for scraping frost. I admire the baby still attached to her mother by the umbilical cord who survived the earthquake. I admire the uncle who found the baby under the rubble. I admire the father who sobs my back is broken, his grief a prayer. And most of all I admire the mother brave enough to give birth on this brave earth.
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Katherine Smith’s recent poetry publications include appearances in Boulevard, North American Review, Mezzo Cammin, Cincinnati Review, Missouri Review, Ploughshares, Southern Review, and many other journals. Her short fiction has appeared in Fiction International and Gargoyle. Her first book Argument by Design (Washington Writers’ Publishing House) appeared in 2003. Her second book of poems Woman Alone on the Mountain (Iris Press) appeared in 2014. She works at Montgomery College in Maryland.