Amy Riddell

In the Anthropocene

All signs point to disaster,
Mama. Icebergs calve and glaciers melt.

Long ago, you set me adrift,
but I remember your crochet hook

and skein of yarn, the way you dropped
a stitch every time I entered a room.

Species are dying as we trespass
the tipping point, Mama.

Little brown bats starve in abandoned mines,
their noses dusted with white fungus.

Scientists study why. We prefer
the imperfect science of recrimination.

You blame me for the extinction
in your eyes. I blame you

for your cigarette and match, the way
that trash bobbed in the swash

where shy coquinas hide.
I couldn’t swim the drowning wave

of your cataclysm, Mama. I couldn’t survive it,
but I remember your abandon

with a hickory switch, how the fire
of those lashes burned my bare legs

when I lay as you commanded,
in submission across the bed.

Transplant Evaluation

For ten days
doctors studied

the anatomy
of his despair—

          calculated failure
               by the dusk

          in his blood
     measured weakness

               by his heart’s
quieting whisper

     weighed need
               by the ghosts

          of his hands
     that fall open

in his lap now
on the eleventh day

when doctors
convene

in the windowless room
of what will be

and spin
the wheel

of the transplant
machine

to tally the distance
     between

doom and harm.

Diagnosis

Arms guarding his chest,
the hepatologist leans

away from the crescendo
his words make, the noisy

syllables suspended there
between us, his eyes cast down

to his feet crossed at the ankles
like Jesus in sacrifice.

We lean in, our clothes rustling
with the effort, our daughter

heaving sobs into one hand
as she reaches for her father

with the other, demanding
an answer to the question

he has no voice to ask:
how long, how long, how long,

as if a prognosis could save
him, as if the obliterating hum

of the florescent fixture could
numb the ache of this moment

or silence what we want to turn
a deaf ear to, the cacophony

a bitter gibberish
we try our best not to chew.

He is ashes now, and I am without

a veiled woman undone
by those last days

when reason abandoned us
and love became

a broken language that cut
our tongues.

We struggled in the ruins,      
disease dismantling

time, hollowing
tenderness.

When he fell into the hard floor,
he said nothing,

only trembled as I covered him
with his Oma’s quilt,

holding its softness
to our cheeks,

enfolding us both
like a benediction.

Then that knock
sounding like deliverance,

EMTs come to lift him.
This was the barefaced hour

when he could still
look into my eyes

but wouldn’t,
before he forgot my face,

before he asked our daughter,
How is it that I am already dead?

 

Amy Riddell is the author of Bullets in the Jewelry Box, a poetry collection, and Narcissistic Injury, a chapbook. Her journal publications include The Inflectionist Review, Rust & Moth, South Florida Poetry Journal, and Rat’s Ass Review. Her new poetry chapbook, Prayer of Scalpel and Ash, will be available in December 2025 from Rockwood Press.