Sarah Maclay
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Becoming Animal
The bird wore no halo.
His beak was large, though.
The woman watched until it moved.
What you are making, he said, is a wave
in a field of barley, almost golden.
When will it rain, she said, I want it to rain.
Feathers are growing around your face.
All the keys, surrounded by black,
all the holes, whispers—
all of these wings will fly when your hands
release them.
In the wood on the wall, a girl
is falling upside down
with the face of an owl.
The grain moves like water.
A man is sideways
burning in the sun.
He hoots.
At the Crossing
I’m holding out my hand to you.
There are three gold coins in my palm.
You don’t see the coins, only my hand.
But it’s as if my hand is cardboard.
That’s what you see—not the coins,
not my palm.
I am trying to tell you something.
I am saying, Here are the coins.
Take them. I’m ready to cross.
You look at the clouds, you look
at the river, you look at my hand.
You can’t take what you can’t see.
Room of Sleep
What I notice about the wings
is the way they almost surround me.
Like a cave.
And the way they lift me.
I do not lift them
(my body is so light,
it could be ash).
And it’s true—they are as heavy
as they look.
Certainly, I should not know this.
I do not ask to know this.
They are the oars,
there in the dark.
They are the large saguaro.
All three of these poems are from Music for the Black Room (U of Tampa Press).
"Becoming Animal" first appeared in Deadstart.
"Room of Sleep" first appeared in The Burnside Review.
"At the Crossing" first appeared in Echo 6 8 1.
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Sarah Maclay is the author of Music for the Black Room and The White Bride (both from University of Tampa Press) and Whore (Tampa Review Prize for Poetry). Her poems, essays and reviews have appeared in APR, FIELD, Ploughshares, The Writers’ Chronicle, Poemeleon, Ninth Letter, The Laurel Review, lyric and numerous other spots including Poetry International, where she serves as book review editor. Her work has been selected for The Best American Erotic Poems: 1800 to the Present (Scribner’s, 2008) and Verse Daily, and she received a Special Mention in The Pushcart Prize XXXI. A visiting assistant professor at Loyola Marymount University, she currently lives in Venice, California.