It was all bidden. To say otherwise meant
ghosts were real, and spirits in forests
no longer standing but being mined
and shipped to burn. Deny their presence:
the feeling of a hand on a throat,
gentle pressure of a butterfly too large,
of cells in the body multiplying as if a child
was forming but not, a headache, a side
swollen. You didn’t pray enough.
You didn’t believe it would get better
so it didn’t and the house caught fire
like a flower until the ashes filled the cellar
where you had hidden from tornadoes.
The ancient forest turned to power
that ran to every town and building.
Lights caught the corners of your eyes
and you never looked directly at them
because it would hurt. Because the image
would stay forever across your vision.
Angie Macri is the author of Sunset Cue (Bordighera), winner of the Lauria/Frasca Poetry Prize, and Underwater Panther (Southeast Missouri State University), winner of the Cowles Poetry Book Prize. An Arkansas Arts Council fellow, she lives in Hot Springs.
