Aground
at maximum ebb—
how goes the world
that nonpurposefully
runs your ship aground
horizontal hulk afloat mud flat
lies across wind
a dissonance that is there
but we don’t want it to be
alien afternoons the penalty
we don’t know what you know
how about this aseptic room
you don’t open your eyes in
every day swelling more tubes
tracheotomy questions
whose nurse’s hands
these are on your genitals
how you are unbroken
beyond what this is
one day every day
we keep thinking we will wake
from this tanker, its conspicuous
gloom filling the center
and you won’t be in that hospital bed
and the sea will be a magic again
Jami Macarty is the author of Landscape of The Wait, a chapbook of poems focusing on her nephew, William’s car accident and year-long coma (Finishing Line Press, June 2017) and Mind of Spring, winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award (Vallum October, 2017). Former Executive Director of Tucson Poetry Festival (1996-2005), she teaches contemporary poetry and creative writing at Simon Fraser University, is a co-founder and editor of the online poetry journal The Maynard, and writes Peerings & Hearings–Occasional Musings on Arts in the City of Glass, a blog series for Anomalous Press A recipient of grants from Arizona Commission on the Arts, Banff Center, and BC Arts Council, among others; several times a Pushcart Prize nominee; a finalist for the 2017 Robert Kroetsch Award, and the winner of the 2016 Real Good Poem Prize (a 2,000 purse!), her poems can be read in American and Canadian journals, including Arc Poetry Magazine, Beloit Poetry Journal, Drunken Boat, The Fiddlehead, Grain, Prism international, Vallum: contemporary poetry, Verse Daily, and Volt.
The Paddock Review 