Andy Young
Summer 2025 | Poetry
Jochebed
under the tarp
in the boat's bough
on a rag pile
these balls of fur
chatoyant eyes
rhythmic whine
like a fiddle's
high strings the boat
has to set out
the men box up
the four barely-born
creatures send them
to a kind home
with a corner
and spare hands
to handfeed
we can't not think
of the mother
returning to
the place the boat
was tied the place
she must have thought
was safest we can't
not think of Moses'
mother painting
each strip of pitch
to keep water
out of the basket
when she sent him
down the Nile
Andy Young's second full-length collection, Museum of the Soon to Depart, was published in October by Carnegie Mellon University Press. She is also the author of All Night It Is Morning (Diálogos Press, 2014) and four chapbooks. She grew up in southern West Virginia and has lived most of her adult life in New Orleans, where she teaches at New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. Her work has recently appeared in Greensboro Review, Drunken Boat, and Michigan Quarterly Review. A graduate of Warren Wilson’s Program for Writers, her work has been translated into several languages. andyyoung.org, @andyyoungpoet