Jami Macarty
Winter 2026 | Poetry
Perennial Risks
Agapanthus: Friendship Hardiness Zones 9 to 11
Took my wrist and broke its hand-strung bracelets.
Came to me on the stairs days after I said too soon.
Storm cloud. Head borne.
Last night to tear open the bag with my teeth.
Butterflies. Boarder. Containers. Cut.
The night before her dog from an eagle’s talons.
Deer resistant. Rabbit resistant.
She said I’m not going to spell it out for you.
Half-dressed suggestions left a silence.
Again in a dream the impulse to come to another woman’s aid.
I was not trying to keep her from getting the violence she wanted.
Clusters of bright blue trumpet-shaped blooms.
Agapanthus: the name derived from
ἀγάπη (agapē – "love"), ἄνθος (anthos – "flower").
Silver Moon. Purple Cloud. Megan’s Mauve.
Rosa rubiginosa: Walking Hardiness Zone 8
She walks the niche of Abbott Street
She walks where asphalt cracks and so does a man among some men
as if how she goes where is about them
Her walking her Debussyan life her lovely bones
What men about pace her but not her as She lit for home
her as some garden favor they impose
Their heaved misogyny where aphids suck the roses
What men about her pace crackcall hey why are you running away
Their unwelcome trellis puzzles into trailing replay
during her urban excursions she tends their menace
alert to potential threat their gauntlet premise
The street not where she owes her dress in air’s gap
where the cracks chronic sirs prefab
Their corner-sniffing headturns jackknife
as she leans dreamy against her life
Zachariah Claypole White is a Philadelphia-based writer and educator, originally from North Carolina. He holds a BA from Oberlin College and an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, where he was a Jane Cooper Poetry Fellow. His work has appeared in The Best Weird Fiction of the Year, Prairie Schooner, Southeast Review, and The Rumpus, amongst others. Zachariah has received support from the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, Writer’s Digest, and Disquiet International. His awards include Flying South's poetry prize as well as two nominations for the Best of the Net and one for a Pushcart Prize. Zachariah teaches at the Community College of Philadelphia, Saint Joseph’s University, and the Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College. You can find more of his work at zachariahclaypolewhite.com.