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Beth Spencer was born in Portland, Oregon. She is the founder of Bear Star Press (www.bearstarpress.com), which publishes poetry and short fiction by writers in western states. Her own poetry and fiction can be found on- and offline at Winning Writers, Split This Rock, Lodestone Journal, Tin House, River Styx, Litro, Empty Mirror, and elsewhere. She has taught editing and publishing at CSU, Chico, and lives in rural Northern California with her husband and dog. The Cloud Museum is her first book.
  Mary Mackey is the author of eight collections of poetry including Sugar Zone, winner of the 2012 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award for Literary Excellence and Finalist for the Northern California Book Reviewers Award; and The Jaguars That Prowl Our Dreams: New and SelectedPoems 1974 to 2018, recently published by Marsh Hawk Press. Mackey’s poems have been praised by Wendell Berry, Jane Hirshfield, Dennis Nurkse, Maxine Hong Kingston, Ron Hansen,
Dennis Schmitz, and Marge Piercy for their beauty, precision, originality, and extraordinary range. Her poetry has been featured four times on The Writer’s Almanac. She is also the author of 14 novels, one of which made The New York Times Bestseller List. Website: marymackey.com The Jaguars That Prowl Our Dreams, Available from: spdbooks.org, amazon.com, and bookstores.d small-group cultures. Painted Tigers
overhead a great snake of stars
is coiling and uncoiling like boiling water while beneath the river the ghost trees sleep like abandoned dogs
when you come here blind and mute
to dream beside this forgotten shore when your eyes are too heavy with remorse to see inward your lips too dry with lies to form words and your brain filled with everything you have abandoned the painted tigers will stalk you on soft pads admiring the vulnerability of your neck the tenderness of your flesh marveling at the way you walk along these paths never looking back as if the jungle were yours as if an animal without teeth or claws could survive in this place where even the smallest insect is death’s messenger
how gently they will put their muzzles to your mouth
how quickly suck out your breath how ecstatically breathe in your dreams the last thing you will feel will be the softness of their fur the quick joy of their teeth
Mary Mackey
from The Jaguars That Prowl Our Dreams: New and Selected Poems 1974 to 2018 |
