- Carnelian, which Suggests the Flesh
The man who studied the lawbuilt the city into a gardenon the old trail to a new country,spreading magnolia seedsfrom the seams of his pocketsbecause his wife loved them.
He would not walk in this garden:it was a project with a visionof two hundred years, as the treesgrew slowly in the red dirtfrom the flat, red seeds
that he took from the fruitof the tree. Like her, he knewhow summer fills with heatand then the tree's scent, its wood,its blooms, the leaves evergreen
and copper in respiration.When the city was gone,there was the garden. Magnolias anchor themselveswith their limbs to form pyramidsagainst the storms, and we go in. [End Page 76]
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 The Pinch and Prairie Schooner. An Arkansas Arts Council fellow, she lives in Hot Springs.