The Bathtub

Caroline Harper New

                                On hurricane days, Mama dressed us                  in life jackets and bike helmets and tucked us  in the bathtub. We swirled prophecies                   of hair around the drain, soothsaying the rain                                  by the pink of the water line, as Mama split                                                           her palms between all six ears                                                  and softened the linoleum with psalms,                                  even the ones we want to forget. Blessed is he                  that dasheth thy little ones on the rocks. The echoes                                   folded into a Book more believable than brimstone.                                                 After all—swamps don't catch fire and we are a people                                                                of Genesis. Our second-lines stomping                                                                 two-by-two through the Flood, with faith                                                 our johnboats can hold each of us and the family                                  dog. Above us, the dove                or more likely the heron, circles                       the swells until subsumed by salt, her babies                                          still tucked in the bulrush. Or babies                                                     flown North to safety as the Atlantic                                          spins carnivorously counterclockwise.                       One Christmas, I came home with a man    from New York who didn't know how to swim,               and Mama gave him a life jacket to keep in his Camry                         just in case. My sisters laughed, and we all                                         moved North to drier land where no one                       needs a johnboat. Where we can pretend    creation purls clockwise, and more time is all we need—but when I see the rainbow                  on TV reverse our blue-green swamps                                            to yellow-orange-red-black, I know                                                                                          it will end with Mama                                                                in her helmet, alone                                       in the bathtub, holding                her little dog.

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Caroline Harper New is a poet, artist, and anthropologist from southwest Georgia. Her work is rooted in the precarious landscape of the Gulf Coast, where she explores human-nature relationships, maternal inheritance, and orientations to time. She is the author of A History of Half-Birds (Milkweed Editions, 2024), winner of the Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry. Her other work includes sculptures, paintings, short films, translations, and eco-collaborations.

“There’s an untamed luminescence to Caroline Harper New’s debut, A History of Half Birds, a collection steeped in science and mythology.”
—Rebecca Morgan Frank, Harriet Books Blog

"A History of Half-Birds, an inventive and impressively wide-ranging collection, has me considering and reconsidering the connections between seemingly disparate things: between poetry and science, both fueled by curiosity, imagination, and possibility; between history and myth, precision and ambiguity, the known and the unknown. In the Anthropocene, we may be tempted to ask what poetry can do for us when what we need are tools for survival. I’d argue that these poems are just that—expertly crafted, satisfying to hold and behold, and sharp enough to dissect what needs dissecting. We’re so lucky to have this book here and now."
—Maggie Smith, author of Goldenrod

“Steeped in Gulf Coast flora and fauna, Caroline Harper New’s A History of Half-Birds is a gorgeous collection of poems that spins widdershins like a hurricane. This book embraces life’s complicated dualities—the precarious gravity of Saturn’s rings, nightmares that visit with every new love, the way an anglerfish attracts both its mate and prey with the same lure. Equally embracing facts and lyricism, New weaves stray opossums and beached whales into love poems, jellyfish and memory into a chandelier. Each poem is full of the world’s intimate facts that suddenly become mirrors. They are tender and wise and illuminate their mysteries. It’s a truly beautiful debut.”
—Traci Brimhall, author of Come the Slumberless to the Land of Nod

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