Mary Mackey

White Gauze Curtains
October 23, 2024 Mackey Mary

White Gauze Curtains

 

in them we see
the dead we have loved
blowing toward us
with outstretched hands

 

how unsubstantial they are
how beautiful in their flight
as they advance and retreat
struggling for purchase

 

Mary Mackey is the author of eight poetry collections, including Sugar Zone, winner of a PEN Award, and The Jaguars That Prowl Our Dreams, winner of a the 2019 Eric Hoffer Award for Best Book Published by a Small Press. Her poetry has been praised by Wendell Berry, Jane Hirshfield, D. Nurkse, Al Young, Rafael Jesús González, and Maxine Hong Kingston for its beauty, precision, originality, and extraordinary range. She is also the author of 14 novels including The New York Times bestseller A Grand Passion. In 2022 her screenplay Time Piece won first prize in the City of Angels Women’s Film Festival. Her most recent book Creativity: Where Poems Begin (Marsh Hawk Press) was a 2023 Northern California Book Reviewers Award finalist for Best Book of Creative Nonfiction Published in Northern California. In Summer 2025, Marsh Hawk Press will publish In This Burning World: Poems of Love and Apocalypse, a collection of her poems dealing with climate change and the need to preserve hope in the face of catastrophe.