Dominus

By ANGIE MACRI

Danger, as in strangers, men or women;
as in twisters at night when you couldn’t
see them coming; as in the machines
that made work so easy you forgot
to watch what you were doing, bushhogs,
saws, grinders; as in any kind of fire,
ovens that used to catch women’s skirts,
boilers in every school and church;
as in falling, from lofts, trees, our fathers’
good graces; as in our human nature,
sinful with denim; as in the undertow
of the river; as in trains unable to stop
due to their length and mass, their hurry;
as in the lord, who has dominion
with his power to harm. He has no other.

Angie Macri is the author of Sunset Cue, winner of the Lauria/Frasca Poetry Prize, and Underwater Panther, winner of the Cowles Poetry Book Prize. An Arkansas Arts Council fellow, she lives in Hot Springs.