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The House Gift

By Joanie Mackowski b. 1963 Joanie Mackowski

Egg-white house, old

ache in the rafters,

small as a button but

yearning for zero:

a sparrow parts the chimney

and veers for my face.

I wanted my nevers

again, my immaculate

touch-down to the durable

granite of love too

heavy to move: this

gift, implacable

bird's-eye sorrow

reared from the original

fairy tale's page—

I don't like it. I offered

no signature, my nature

altered, and I'm over

my hurricane. Rocking

room to room, this bird

threatens my gravity,

threaded through like a pearl

from the evening's stem.

Didn't I break all

eighty-eight bones

of my compass, my wingspan

spun from my awkwardness?

This bird returns

to the shell with monstrous

wings, wings clumsy as shovels

in a fist of dirt. It's covered

with ashes, sloughing off

cloud—caught

in my hair, brown

tumor bulged upside

down on the floor

to meet the applause:

this blessing's too

unwieldy. But open

one door, one terrible

goodbye, hello—the sparrow

flings like a shout for the trees.

Source: Poetry (November 2004).

Biography

Joanie Mackowski’s collections of poems are The Zoo (2002) and View from a Temporary Window (2010). She received a BA from Wesleyan University, was a Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University, and received a PhD from the University of Missouri. A professor at Cornell University, she has worked as a French translator, a journalist in the San Francisco Bay Area, and a juggler. She is the winner of the 2003 Kate Tufts . . .

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