Weekly Read: “Etymology of Chlorophyll” by Caroline Harper New
BLR‘s Weekly Read series brings you one outstanding story, poem, or essay from our archive. This week’s read is “Etymology of Chlorophyll” by Caroline Harper New, which won BLR‘s John & Eileen Allman Prize for Poetry in 2023, selected by judge Phillip B. Williams.
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If fingernails could dig you like lichen
from my lexicon. In illness, I lop what is left
of you from my tongue, knowing to eliminate
is to loiter and loiter is in the same language
as love. As laceration. As love. We both used to
say as much though I admit at first
I pretended not to. I love—you lyre?
I love—you lick? I love—you
limp and lily-dark, you lovely
lump. Lewd as lamb. You say I was a lark
laid warm by my wingbones to your chest.
What do you expect? …
Why this poem?
“Caroline has created a poem that not only looks beautiful on the page but sounds like a song when read aloud: ‘we’d say amor—as in enamored, / or unarmored. Or maybe phil—as in / I philosophize you. Philander you. Phillet you, my lovely philodendron.’ Whenever I am asked by prose writers (and non-writers) what ‘good’ poetry is, I show them this poem.”
– Rosalind Aparicio-Ramirez, BLR Digital Content Editor
More from Caroline
Caroline Harper New is a writer and visual artist from Georgia. She is the author of A History of Half-Birds (Milkweed Editions, 2024), winner of the Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry, and has a chapbook forthcoming with YesYes Books in 2026. Caroline’s writing reckons with motherhood, ancestry, and natural disaster in the Gulf Coast, and is grounded in an academic background in anthropology. Learn more about Caroline on her website.
In 2023, Caroline joined BLR for an interview after she won the John & Eileen Allman Prize for Poetry. Listen to the conversation, prefaced by Caroline’s reading of “Etymology of Chlorophyll,” below.