Angie Macri, American poet, Arkansas Arts Council fellow, winner of the 2021 Lauria/Frasca Poetry Prize.
CLEAR STORY
Angie Macri
The city expanded west from the landing,
the sky the limit from the river into prairies.
Fur traded under clerestories, and trains
formed arteries for the body of a new country.
Coal burned so often that noon was midnight.
All this from a man and woman dreaming
they could rule the world instead of being in its debt.
He brought books, each a bound city he opened
if he had time in winter. She sent downriver
for a box of bees to pollenate the garden
that disappeared in time to warehouses,
then blight, then a steel arch as if the heavens
needed reinforcing. All along, the river absorbed
the rain and snow as if they’d never fallen.
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THE LABYRINTH OF A TREE
Angie Macri
When pulled, the spider web took another form.
The bull’s-eye relaxed, the bull unseen but felt,
skull on muscle paused on the forest floor.
The girl said oh, as she had heard her mother
say before. The spider had already hidden
in the labyrinth of a tree. The city ran
on coal and gasoline as it breathed, impatient
in the heat it generated in its need. The bull
kept one hoof in the woods, one on the road,
and didn’t blink. The girl, gone backward
from his eye, wiped the silver of his face
off of her own, aware now of its size, one eye
as large as her face. Even after she’d walked on,
she still sensed threads across her skin.
============
THE MONSTER, WHAT SOME THOUGHT A MAN
Angie Macri
or bear, came from the swamp,
what had once been a lake from a glacier,
then the meandering bed of a river, softer
than any bed a man had ever made.
The river had been dammed,
slowing, filling to prevent a drought
in a place where clay prevents rain
from becoming groundwater.
Instead the water runs away.
The mine had been closed in strike,
and the water seeped in
the ceiling of slate.
In time, they mined again, even under the lake.
A child ran in his house to say
the white ghost was in the yard,
and no one believed him until the neighbors
saw it, too. The stories started this way
on the edge of the orchards,
acres of apples:
summer, seven feet tall,
heavy in white fur and mud,
what our mothers said you could smell
before you saw it, or sometimes only
could smell, never see,
but you would know it was near. How it screamed.
How it didn’t seem to care.
=====
SCINTILLA
Angie Macri
The sky filled with wolves
except to the southeast
where the dog star moved
blue to white to red, scintillation
a word the child learned
but couldn’t pronounce,
fixed on the page. The world
turned until she understood
that books held only a few
stories of wolves. Their eyes,
their teeth meant little
more than appetite. They ran
out of the margins and soon
she couldn’t sleep for all
the calling until the dog
stretched beside her
across the ground, arrow
with aim so true no bow
was needed. The worse the air,
the more the star moved
until she knew bad things were coming
but not to worry. See the fire
so large, so near it would be
the sun if just a few steps
of light years closer?
And no, the star has not fallen.
That was you, but it comes
to your side, faithful, glowing.
======
SOUNDBOX
Angie Macri
The owl takes the cello down its throat
so the strings and wood are left,
song digested in its cells. The energy released
fuels its eyes, its perfect horns
like the slice of moon, how drawn by arms
no one can see. The arrow
is also concealed, but the angle
of the bow shows the weapon points
at the earth, the goddess in her aim.
Body, neck, where fingers used to be, the owl
asks the same questions for centuries
or rather people hear it that way,
what is in their own mind, who will
come for me, who sees, who knows.
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WHAT PLEASURE A QUESTION,
Angie Macri
not an answer. She leaned
into the apple tree, which then
was evergreen, to the snake’s
hands, sweet flesh, no need
to be ashamed. We share
and share alike, the peel
not loose like night on day,
but tight. She took the snake’s
hands, diamondbacked,
and opened its question.
It was the first time she had
something to give, what
the man couldn’t take, the first time
the man said please:
please let me have a bite.
He found the iron ore
and brought it home.
He found the coal under
the forest and lit it on fire
to watch it go
so the snake couldn’t catch her
if she fell and she couldn’t
hold anything but its tongue.
Never let the fire go out or else,
he warned, and she held on.