by Katherine Riegel

Diving across the concrete patio, I grab
one dog’s collar while keeping hold
of the other. The fledgling—so small
I can’t tell what species it is—chirps
and hops away into the grass. Fifty-

something isn’t an age to be hurling
one’s body down. Elbow, knee, ankle
bruise and swell like rising bread dough.

We had a horse when I was growing up
who loved my mother so much
that if she had a seizure and fell
he would stand over her and bare his teeth

at anyone approaching. This fierce chestnut
lowered his head so at six I could push his bridle
over his ears, opened his mouth for the bit.

I knew I could save the baby bird
even though the first dog—a retriever—
had scooped it up in his mouth
because I could still hear it, muffled
but somehow echoing inside that toothy cage.

When my mother opened her eyes
to the sight of her horse’s belly
she’d say Move, you silly oaf,

and he’d step over her as carefully
as you carry a brimming cup to the table,
never spilling a drop.

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Katherine Riegel’s lyric memoir, Our Bodies Are Mostly Water, is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press in summer 2025. She is also the author of Love Songs from the End of the World, the chapbook Letters to Colin Firth, and two more books of poetry. Her work has appeared in Brevity, Catamaran, One, Orion, and elsewhere. She is managing editor of Sweet Lit and teaches online classes in poetry and creative nonfiction. Find her at katherineriegel.com.

by Katherine Riegel

Having a body is like dragging around
a huge purse, one of those satchel-sized leather
behemoths that holds everything you could possibly

need: wallet, change purse, sunglasses, pen, lip balm,
clear stream to sit beside, existential crisis, your dead
relatives’ voices, doggie poop bags. It’s all

in there but you have to root around
for your keys, and while you’re pawing through
you find other things you forgot you were carrying:

envelope with a friend’s address on it, white-flecked rock
you picked up because it was shaped like a heart.
The thing is fucking heavy, and for some of us

it just gets heavier, and then we discover
we can’t run with it, the corners
are soggy with pain, old to-do lists spill

from the top. The body begins to tear,
duct tape doesn’t help, it’s a struggle to keep
everything where it’s supposed to be. Suddenly

your crackling knees insist I am you and your mind
says Fuck off but then you remember you’re actually
inside the ginormous purse and oh-my-god there’s

the bike you rode at fourteen, hot wind in your face,
the turquoise ring you can no longer wear on your swollen fingers,
and at the very bottom a weedy path

you know you have to walk—you want
to walk—if you can just get it together, chivvy yourself
out of your chair, not always hopeful but alive, still alive.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

Katherine Riegel is the author of Love Songs from the End of the World, the chapbook Letters to Colin Firth, and two more books of poetry. Her work has appeared in Brevity, The Gettysburg Review, The Offing, One, Poets.org, and elsewhere. She is co-founder and managing editor of Sweet Lit, and teaches independent online classes in poetry and creative nonfiction. Find her at katherineriegel.com.

by Katherine Riegel

So much goes on in the country of my backyard
that I need a throne to oversee it all. Of course the dogs

spill out through the back door
into their favorite room. They squat and sniff,

chase toads, watch the neighbor’s border collie
spring up to try to see them over the fence.

Birds inhabit the air and the trees, call dibs
on the feeder, flee when the mourning doves

or the starlings come bumbling in like those old
chubby planes barely making the runway.

Hummingbirds ignore us all, distant as ballerinas.
The lilies I inherited from the previous owner

swell, about to open gaudy orange umbrellas
that will split and bend backwards like curious

octopi. Coreopsis presents buttons of green buds
in preparation for a festival of yellow. I should be

planting new flowers for the dogs to trample
but I have no energy for extra heartbreak, this month

last year the month of my sister’s diagnosis
and her gone before winter solstice. But I shouldn’t

forget the compost pile, all the vegetable detritus
and tea bags and egg cartons mixing into a rank

stew, the miracle of carbon breaking down
so in a few months I can remove the lower panel

and shovel out something better, richer,
the result of neglect and transformation in the dark.

Oh, believe me, I know,
the shadows of leaves sway and flutter

over the grass, a hundred hands waving,
and every time I breathe, I am waving back.

______________________________________________________________

Katherine Riegel is the author of Love Songs from the End of the World (Main Street Rag 2019), the chapbook, Letters to Colin Firth, and two more books of poetry. Her work has appeared in The Gettysburg Review, The Offing, Orion, Poets.org, Tin House, and elsewhere. She is co-founder and poetry editor for Sweet Lit. Find her at katherineriegel.com.

by Katherine Riegel

The back yard is drowning and I can’t tell

if that’s good or bad for nesting birds.

They still come for both suet and seed

but they always do, freeze and scorch and all

the in-between days too. I should be worried

about more than the birds, I picture

the worms fleeing in miniature arks

and spend some time considering how high

the water has to get before someone

decides it’s time to go. I keep wanting

to call my mother, ten years dead,

just to find out what she would make

of this mess. To get perspective. Have we

really fucked up this time, neck deep

in bloody water like it feels? Is clinging

to the beat and rise of feathered things,

their profligate beauty, more or less hopeless

than putting our faith in builders

of drains and ships and all those hungry

machines? If Earth is our mother I already know

how it is to be motherless: like the suit of armor

moving on its own, ridiculous

but frightening because nobody knows how.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Katherine Riegel's newest book, Love Songs from the End of the World, is forthcoming from Main Street Rag Publishing. She's also the author of two other poetry collections and a prose poem/flash cnf chapbook, Letters to Colin Firth. Her work has appeared in Brevity, The Gettysburg Review, The Offing, Orion, Poets.org, Tin House, and elsewhere. She is co-founder and poetry editor for Sweet: A Literary Confection. Her website is katherineriegel.com.