Head curved downward,
two gray flecks, unblinking—
eyes?—closed. Below,
a white knot, maybe
an arm, and the vibrating core
at the center was her heart
was her heart was her heart.
Floating in apocalypse
soup—how could we know?
Little island. That night
I dreamed the rising tides
of my body. Dreamed
rain heaving into a body
of water, body that
could drown a daughter.
This poem first appeared in Given (Autumn House Press, 2023).
—
Liza Katz Duncan is the author of Given (Autumn House Press, 2023), which received the Autumn House Press Rising Writer Award and the Laurel Prize for Best International First Collection. Her poems have appeared in AGNI, The Common, The Kenyon Review, Poem-a-Day, Poetry, Poetry Daily, and elsewhere. A 2024-25 Climate Resiliency Fellow, she lives in New Jersey (Lenni-Lenape) where she teaches multilingual learners.
