Gloryland

Anne Marie Macari

• Publisher: Alice James Books
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781882295500
• eBook ISBN: 9781938584558
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

Gloryland re-examines motherhood, death, birth, and rebirth, drawing on religious and secular creation myths to enact a feminist religion. Bold, rich lyrics reveal the grand in the domestic, claiming the physical as an essential part of the -female experience, declaring that to live fully in the body is the truest, bravest, and most glorious form of worship.

One

Our journey had advanced—

Our feet had almost come

To that odd Fork in Being’s Road—

–EMILY DICKINSON

Mary’s Blood

It was Mary’s blood made him, her blood

sieved through meaty placenta to feed him,

grow him, though Luke wrote she was no more

than the cup he was planted in, a virgin

no man ever pressed against or urged

who could barely catch eyes with the towering

angel but felt God come to her like light

through glass, like a fingerprint left on glass;

still, it’s hard to believe she never wanted

to be rid of the thing inside her, wasn’t

shamed carrying him, the child’s

perfect head pointing at the ground

and rubbing her cervix like the round earth

rubbing the thin wall of the sky that holds it.

All women reach the time of wanting it out

but not wanting it out, not knowing

what’s coming, so she must have spread

her legs in anguish because what was inside

pressing her membranes for release

was both herself and a stranger;

and she must have cried out

as the small head crowned,

splitting her, her pelvis swung

wide to push him through the wall

of this world, till what came from her

was a child lit with her own gore,

soiled, everything open so her inside

was now outside, cracked open, it means

mother to crack open, to be rent

by what comes to replace her. Such

is love—the only way. It was Mary’s

blood made him: his eyes, tongue,

his penis, her milk fattened his legs,

made hair on the crown of his head,

she grew caul to wrap him and door

to come through and nothing, not even

crying Father, Father, to the warped

blue sky can change it.

New York, 1927

This time it’s true, as much as I remember

from what she told me. How she gave birth

in their tenement and it took nearly two days.

In America she was Mary, always Mary,

all those hours begging her namesake

for help, the midwife muttering about

going home, thinking this one’s dead, with

the baby wedged between her narrow hips,

a cross on the wall, her fingers gripping

the sheets. Years later I understood

what she meant. How she drifted

in and out, like being on a boat in fog,

rowing, drifting, but called away from

everyone she knew toward a wilderness.

As if she had to go out alone to meet

the child and bring him through not just

with her body, but some other part of her

searching at the same time. Of course

she prayed, she knew what it smelled like

to be that close to death and she wanted to live,

to get the baby out alive, her first-born

who unlocked her for the others.

In the next room her husband and his father

heard the child cry and could finally feel

their own sickness and fear overtaking them.

Maybe they’d been drinking, or maybe it was

her father-in-law’s red hair startling her

as he came into the bedroom just when

a familiar darkness began refilling her belly.

His eyes looked wild with confusion for

his first grandson and though she knew

she was alive, he looked strange

to her as a being from the other world

and put his hands into his pockets and pulled

the cloth out so all his money fell—no

she said he threw it—onto her bed,

silver coins landing around her legs,

the white insides of his pockets flapping

out like tiny wings at his hips. He called in

all his sons—my stunned grandfather

and his unmarried brothers—and pointed

to my father sleeping on the bed all

washed and wrapped in white by

the midwife. Now, he told the men,

you work only for him.

Night Feeding

It’s hot snow dripping on the plain

of your stomach, the child’s desperate mouth

rooting till you rub your breast

against his cheek to orient him.

All night long he wakes every two hours

and his sucking tows you inside yourself,

tugs you beneath the muscles of your face

and neck and into the muscle of your heart.

You are all water, all milk, from the soup

of the pelvis to your wet eyes,

you are sour desire thrumming, the cord

he pulls reaching into your ankle,

...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Note to the Reader
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Part One
• Part Two
• About the Author