TROUBLESOME RISING DIGITAL ANTHOLOGY
As the Years Unravel
Amy Le Ann Richardson
I think about the flood again,
but also the richness of summer
with its cacophonous green hills
how that night was sandwiched
between joy so intense I had whiplash
and three years later,
there are still little pieces of the days
before and days after I’ve forgotten
but remember as I scroll through
pictures on my phone from those weeks
how can life pack in so much
how are we supposed to hold it all?
or was it never the intent to keep it
crammed into our beings
perhaps, we’re supposed to let it spill
out in tears and onto pages and canvases
maybe it’s those frayed ends that
weave together our meaning,
even as we pick it all apart.
Sink, Swim, Swallow
Amy Le Ann Richardson
Watching the news right now—
the flooding in Texas
the flooding in North Carolina
the flooding in New Mexico
the flooding in Illinois—
I am back on that porch in Hindman July 2022
waters rushing toward me,
toward folks I love,
cutoff from the world.
Every clip another trigger,
another push back to the night
I didn’t think I’d survive.
How many things did the flood swallow
I will never be able to name?
Yet, it keeps coming again and again,
claiming more parts of my mind
baptizing this life in trauma
unhealed
unrelenting
washing over me
swifter than I can surface,
faster than I can process,
raging like water in all those
places on TV,
and I am clinging to paper and pens and
friends across the miles
who get it because
they’ve been there too
but how long until it’s all of us
on this life raft
desperate
distraught
drowning.
Amy Le Ann Richardson is a writer, educator, and advocate based in Carter County, Kentucky. She is the author of three poetry collections, including Out of Places (Pine Row Press, 2025), and the editor of Rooted, Resilient, Rising: Women Growing Food across the Mountains (University Press of Kentucky, forthcoming). She holds an MFA from Spalding University, and her work has appeared in multiple literary journals.
Edited by Melissa Helton
Length: 272 pages
Releases: September 2024
