michael mack poem "becoming annie"

Winner of the 2009 Writers Circle National Poetry Competition, Michael Mack's poem "Becoming Annie" was chosen by Patricia Fargnoli, Poet Laureate of New Hampshire, from over 400 submissions drawn from 23 states nationwide.

becoming annie

who wakes in a wrinkled cotton nightie.

She watches a luminous hand

touch her ticking wrist.

 

Becoming Annie, who groans and walks

 

to a medicine chest, rummages for her rosary,

finds a Band-Aid box of buttons and dimes,

one gown propped in the closet.

 

Are we becoming Annie?

 

Trailing water, she bends for the stairs

and squeaks down the banister,

dropping lilies of tissue paper.

 

Barely aware we could be Annie

 

we cannot remember what to forget,

pray to ourselves in baby voices,

lose names, faces, keys,

 

till one night we see Annie

 

sailing out our doorway,

gown lisping over the porch

sidelong to the street.

 

May a city rise in the gleam of our breathing.

May love brush its sudden

feathers on our bodies,

 

our running feet.

– michael mack

gown

From the judge's award letter...

"What I love about this poem is the originality in its portrayal of the old woman. The details are so very specific that she comes to life for me...as a real, lovable, person. But what really vaults the poem into first place is the way it takes off (literally and metaphorically) in an imaginative and whimsical way toward the end, when "one night we see Annie sailing out our doorway, gown lisping over the porch...." And then, while I am still breathless with surprise, the poet writes that wonderful almost blessing that pulls together all the previous lines asking if "we are becoming Annie" (and of course we all are): "May a city rise in the gleam of our breathing/ May love brush its sudden feathers on our bodies, our running feet." The poem simply takes my breath away...it's light and deep at the same time, and it's universal."

– patricia fargnoli