Angie Macri
They founded every city they could on rivers,
even dry beds, the kind that flash alive
once and a while when deserts bloom with the wish
of those in dust. Such times were all it took
to convince the powers-that-be that a world of dust
was usual, and fine, even earth the shade of bones left
in the sun for years. Clouds, which were rare,
rose as if the mountains had finally worked
their way loose. Like mountains, the clouds had names
if children took the time to call them:
whale, castle, god, out of which faces bloomed
and changed, boiling from within.
Return to Fall 2018 Volume 10.1
ANGIE MACRI is the author of Underwater Panther (Southeast Missouri State University), winner of the Cowles Poetry Book Prize, and Fear Nothing of the Future or the Past (Finishing Line). Her recent work appears in DIAGRAM, Quiddity, andThe Southern Review. An Arkansas Arts Council fellow, she lives in Hot Springs. Find her online at angiemacri.wordpress.com