Philly Poetry Chapbook Review is pleased to present five original poems by Amy Riddell as our first biweekly featured poet of the Winter 2026 issue.
Poems
Reading the Body
Pain teaches nothing, mocks my stuttering struggle
to read my darling’s suffering, his body a manual now
instructing me how to decode his twisting turn toward
and away from what hurts him, teaching me when
to beg the hospice nurse for a higher dose, when
to scream because he can’t, his tongue a dead bird
fallen from the luminous nest of words we built together,
a lexicon we each thumbed for decades
as we wrote a book of the other’s face.
Opposite of Meaning
What to do now with myself,
sitting palms up like a supplicant begging
the universe
for a bit of fluff,
just a tuft of new growth
to cover the worn spots.
Maybe emptiness has no answer,
his dry cup
in the cabinet
a void to fill,
like his unlaced Reeboks
I slip onto my feet to trudge the garbage
to the curb,
only my foot
limping back
into the silence where
wire hangers bare their skeletal shoulders,
his clothes
boxed up and labeled
for another day.
The bathroom mirror
swallows only my face, slack around the jaw,
not even a smudge
on the glass to mark
that his smile is gone.
Zebra
When you hear hoofbeats,
think horses, not zebras.
—Medical maxim
The black and white striped mirage moved
like a common belly ache, a malady my husband’s doctors
called indigestion or acid reflux or maybe just scar tissue
pulling where his liver transplant healed the year before.
They didn’t know. The symptoms persisted,
first a gnawing ache, he said, like a visceral abandonment,
his doctors shaking their heads against pleas for meds.
Drug seeking, their eyes said.
Back home again, he paced the house while I slept,
his fate agony now. Each night, he searched until morning
for relief from the pain that worsened when he sat or lay down,
the belt of misery tightening, the mystery shredding even the idea
of diagnosis, recurrence a choking thing like a barbed-wire ligature
in the unseen hands of the cancer we thought had been cured.
Then It Was Over
He died in a hospice bed, his final breath
a relief that breaks me still. I bathed his face
and chest, changed his shirt.
Why? I don’t know.
He was going to the place where bone becomes ash.
He was crossing the threshold of a door
I could not open.
I had heard his life end,
the sound so soft it felt like sleep, a respite
from the long nights of vigil and pain,
the syringes never enough
between waves of agony.
The life we knew closed with his eyes—
his mouth motionless and white in death.
I could not follow him,
so I held my own hands in my lap
when the night man came to cover him
with a velvet drape. I could not
lie down with him,
though I wanted to,
so I held my breath, held my hands, held my gaze
to the scene where his body lay
draped in absence.
The final door stood open—
and what became of him became of me—
no more no more no
more no more.
Fever of Unknown Origin
Hints of honeysuckle as evening settles
on our soft voices. Nothing amiss,
nothing to break us, grab our wrists,
stay our chopping onions and carrots
for this fragrant family soup,
no crisis to scramble the radio
while he sets bowls, I lay spoons,
crusty bread warming us.
When the crippling comes,
it comes first as chattering teeth,
then bony chill that sends him
collapsing to the sofa, his hands
a tremor, his body an entire volcano
affliction roiling and rolling
until it boils over like the soup,
scalding every surface of the ordinary.
Then a dimly lit hospital room,
his IV leaking tears. When crisis builds,
his eyes stare blank, unmaking me
as though I were no one
moving toward him with a basin
of ice water, cubes clinking
like oblivion when I settle beside him
and vaporize into his burning skin.
About “Reading the Body”
‘Reading the Body’ is based on my experience of caring for my husband at home while he was dying from bile duct cancer. Managing his pain became fraught in the last week of his life when he could no longer swallow the medications that had kept him comfortable. Instead, hospice nurses instructed me to administer liquid morphine by mouth every two hours, but the dosage was inadequate. The poem explores the vulnerability and intimacy found in such a crisis.
Author Bio
Amy Riddell is the author of Bullets in the Jewelry Box, a poetry collection, and Narcissistic Injury, a chapbook. A Pushcart nominee, Amy’s journal publications include The Inflectionist Review, Rust & Moth, South Florida Poetry Journal, The Orchards Journal of Poetry, Rat’s Ass Review, Misfit Magazine, Prairie Schooner, Black Warrior Review, and Birmingham Poetry Review.
Her new poetry chapbook, Prayer of Scalpel and Ash, is now available from Rockwood Press,
Contents
“Managing [my husband’s] pain became fraught in the last week of his life when he could no longer swallow the medications that had kept him comfortable…The poem explores the vulnerability and intimacy found in such a crisis.” Read five poems by Amy Riddell, our first biweekly poet of the Winter 2026 issue, along with a few words about “Reading the Body.”
Chapbook Poem: Aphasia by Robert Allen
“Ultimately this is a poem of love and recognition, of finding the right words for the right listener, to the one who listens and understands.” Read the featured Chapbook Poem of the Month for January 2026, “Aphasia,” along with a few words from the poet.
Book Excerpt: The Egg of Anything by Paula Bohince
“The poem is filled with moments of ‘O’ sounds and ‘Ah’ sounds, mimicking the O of the egg and the Ah of the open jaw. I like that the poem is compact in its little form, also a bit egg-like.” Read the featured Excerpt Poem of the Month for January 2026, “The Egg of Anything” from A Violence by Paula Bohince, along with a few words from the poet.
Three Poems by Abraham Aondoana
“Instead of providing any solution to the issue, the poem is ready to be open to the ambiguity that can enable doubt, tenderness, and resilience to co-exist. By so doing, it points to survival not as victory, but as endurance…” Read three poems by Abraham Aondoana, our second biweekly poet of the Winter 2026 issue, along with a few words about “Surviving a Country That is Also a Question.”