Thursday Mar 28

MacariAnneMarie Anne Marie Macari is the author of four books of poetry, including Red Deer (Persea Books, 2015) and She Heads Into the Wilderness (Autumn House, 2008). In 2000 Macari won the APR/Honickman first book prize for Ivory Cradle. She has also coedited, with Carey Salerno, Lit From Inside: 40 Years of Poetry From Alice James Books.
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Where is the Gem?


Who knows red
or cobalt

or the minerals
in my head

emerald stain
of hummingbird

purple tinge
of dread?

Where is the gem
that was promised?

Crystal in silt and clay
or the spark in

the tree as I come close
and it reaches

then bends away
My red tree didn’t

ask to bloom, didn’t
pray not to shrink

in the cold, the gem
of its veins runs

wild through its tips
ruby through its tips

it touches me
then pulls away




Yielding and Simple


Don’t go down into heaven, don’t go down
to heaven’s woods, where
deer lead the way into circles

of birch, through circles and shadows, too fast
to follow           Linger where decay
opens to our steps, where we cleanse ourselves

with dead leaves     Could I ever
be yielding and simple?     Yielding
and simple again?     Different than

before? O dear one, don’t go down
to heaven while I’m still learning     Spiral
forest, no path through the brush

Heaven’s in the voices, quick through
the branches, voices yielding,
simple, through circles of birch




We Will All Go Home With You


As a child, picking through
blackberry thickets,
through underbrush

and thorns, I thought
we were all together,
but you weren’t born

I filled a pail
with fruit, scratched
my arms in that dense

and stopped to place
a black orb
on my tongue     Far into time,

my mouth like a place
of sight, and a purple-
black unrolling inside—

I heard the only door
while trees leaned overhead
We will all

go home with you, through
brambles and weeds
That is what they said