Skip to main content
SearchLoginLogin or Signup

What Will You Feed Them?

Published onDec 09, 2024
What Will You Feed Them?
·


What Will You Feed Them? 

Scraping corn till its milk covers 
my hands. Silky pile of husks. Tomato,
rosemary, chives from the garden. 
Dreaming back far into the flesh of the plant. 

How we are plants grown awkward and strange. 

We saw the tail hanging from the hawk's
beak as it flew off, an apple protruding
from the mouth of the deer. 

I whisked and pounded, sifted 
and sliced. It was mortar 
for their bones. It was what 
we found in the woods.
The egg that fit so well in my palm
and what came out of it. 

Fire. Blood. Fungus.
Muscle. Marrow. Greens.
Nuts and garlic, wild carrot. 

It's the food inside the food,
the invisible heart of the berry,
how it goes on beating 
in the hallways of the body. 

When the Complete comes to find me
the one question will be, What did
you feed them? As if I could
remember the colors arranged 

just so, the balance, a lifetime
of salt thrown into the pot
and whirling there. As if each 
bite was language broken 
down in the mouth, each word 

tasting of its sour its bitter 
its sweet, to stem the craving. 
What we swallowed all those years—

platter of distress, bowl 
of hope. What I chewed—my own
fingers and lip. What did you feed them? 

I fed them love. What did you feed them?
Love and bones, gristle,
sermons, air, mercy, 

rain, ice, terror and soup, anger and dandelion
and love. What did 

you feed them? Go to sleep 
in the straw and when you wake up 
I will give you something warm in a cup, 

I will mix it myself, and when the Complete
finally comes for me I'll have water
hot on the stove, the tea 

just right, I'll say I've sucked 
the bread of this life 
but I'm never full, I'll go
with my mouth open— 

(Copyright 2005)

Vol. 35, no. 1, 2006

Anne Marie Macari is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Heaven Beneath (Persea, 2020) and Red Deer (Persea, 2015). Macari’s first book, Ivory Cradle, won the Honickman/APR First Book Prize in 2000, chosen by Robert Creeley. Her poetry and essays have been widely published in magazines such as The Iowa Review, Field, and APR.

 

 

Comments
0
comment
No comments here
Why not start the discussion?