Still Life with Magnolia and Dove

American Poetry Review, The, May/Jun 2005 by Macari, Anne Marie

She says she wants to leave except her bones

are dissolving in her back so she can't

even walk; I know she's not writing

these phone numbers down.

It's her own story, I have no business,

but when she says / haven't

told anyone, I move the receiver

from my ear, already knowing

what she'll say as she describes her husband's

forearm-block-of-wood slamming

her head while outside the magnolia opens

flower by flower, each branch

bouncing when the petals spring apart.

Near my window, the dove turns toward

the sun and the pink streak

on its neck surprises me, I'm touched from all

angles by pink radiation

heartsick. And just because I once thought

I'd die, it's not the same. If I ate

my own cocoon to get out, swallowed my fetid

corset till I stank of newness,

why should she care, trapped in her bed, dreaming

of dying, sky pouring

over the tree and the tree still opening.

Maybe in time the lost iris

of the eyes of Solomon will pluck our orbs

from their delirious cradles,

or maybe we need a madness we can cling to.

What we learn is never learned

enough, which I know when every window in my body

hurts to be opened and when I have said

too much. What I learn is never learned

enough no matter how close I sleep

to the sky, no matter what bird bends over me.

It's taken my whole life to get here,

a kind of safety she'll have to find somewhere

in the cup of occipital bone.

She cannot see my bird scratching the dirt, the flowers

breaking apart in the light,

she has her own story, she's living to tell it.

ANNE MARIE MACARI won the APR/Honickman first book prize in 2000 for her book Ivory Cradle. She has been published in numerous magazines such as The Iowa Review, Tri Quarterly, and The American Poetry Review. Her new book, Gloryland, will be published in September 2005 by Alice James Books. She teaches at the New England College low-residency MFA program.