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| A man carries the body of a child, after what rescue workers described as a suspected gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhun. Photograph: Ammar Abdullah/Reuters via The Guardian, April 5, 2017 |
My daughters’ faces, quivering beneath Heavy
Water, their lips pucker and slide breath
from the inception of the word to the final release of the air.
And I all at once catch a flicker of them in the air,
their lungs grown bone-heavy.
I seize breath, before my own breath
is pressed, mouth-to-mouth to force breath
to form the word in them, air
becomes mercury in the glass and the heavy
air between us too much like one breath or word-clouds across our heavy sky.
Jo-Ella Sarich has practised as a lawyer for a number of years, recently returning to poetry after a long hiatus. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Quarterday Review, Cleaver Magazine, Blackmail Press, Barzakh Magazine, Poets Reading the News, The Galway Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, takahē magazine and the Poetry New Zealand Yearbook 2017. @jsarich_writer
