Anne Marie Macari’s first book, Ivory Cradle, won the APR first book prize in 2000. Her second book, Gloryland, was published by Alice James Books in 2005. Her poems have appeared widely in literary magazines and, in 2005, she won the James Dickey Award for poetry from Five Points magazine.
It was Mary’s blood made him, her blood sieved through meaty placenta to feed him, grow him, though Luke wrote she was no more than the cup he was planted in, a virgin no man ever pressed against or urged who could barely catch eyes with the towering angel but felt God come to her […]
Talking to the children’s absence, you imagine them canoeing or sitting before a fire, sparks arcing like imitation stars. There’s so much to say, even in the unrelenting heat, the sun balanced overhead while you collect facts for them as if they can hear you: how the barracuda’s jaw can spread so wide then thrash […]
When I asked her how the world began my mother’s face went blank. I was very young, trying for the first time to see the universe as endless. All I saw was darkness swirling into itself. How could anything be endless? But how could it be contained? By what? All cosmos held in the crook […]
Light was being, held by her own hands or touched like water burning bare skin. In the beginning meant learning to see: a thousand kinds of green, the vine-crawl along rocks, the groping mouths of flowers. In the beginning all they knew was yes, so when the first no settled quietly around the tree they […]
After the wave there’s the tide-pool in the ribbed cup. Now I own what you left me and I’m salt-rimmed, stained, lit by small hands trying to feel their way inside, floating on the black ocean beneath pelvic blood-stars. Because I’m trying not to lose any, I sleep against you to be the child on […]
On Good Friday you call from across country to describe crosses pushed in wheelbarrows, penitents with mouths full of rocks. Don’t pray for me, is all I can think, my old faith crawling sideways over the dry earth, changing shapes, refusing the vinegar, the sad sponge. I’m trying not to plan ahead for love’s daily […]
Scraping corn till its milk covers my hands. Silky pile of husks. Tomato, rosemary, chives from the garden. Dreaming back far into the flesh of the plant. How we are plants grown awkward and strange. We saw the tail hanging from the hawk’s beak as it flew off, an apple protruding from the mouth of […]
