PoetryMagazine.com Editor's Featured Poet Anne Marie Macari

Anne Marie Macari
USA

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

Look, My Side Splits with Joy

Look, my side splits with joy as if I could draw
the rib out of myself. Some days I’m just

a gate opening and closing. Or a pond
and someone swimming to the surface. Some days

you are listening, but not always. I was
a cell and a rodent. A seahorse and a horse.

And you? We were grass and moss, wasp and
the paper house. I was grotto, painted cave,

canals salty and webbed. You were sometimes
everything. When I come through here again,

will you be waiting? A root underground, a tuber,
a stone. Even if everything is wrong,

will you know me? I’ve never been able
to tell anyone, really, who I am.

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