Save What You Can

By Katherine Riegel

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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.

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• 9/12 / Poetry Reading in partnership with Letras Latinas, the literary initiative at the Institute for Latino Studies (ILS), celebrating its 20th year, with visiting poet-in-residence Jordan Pérez + SWWIM’s own Alexandra Lytton Regalado / Conversation moderated by Letras Latinas’s Laura Villareal to immediately follow / The Betsy-South Beach, Miami Beach, FL / Live and Live-Streamed on Instagram Live/Facebook Live at @swwimmiami / 7:00 pm EST / Free

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