Anne Haven McDonnell

Ceremony

She covered her scars
             with two fanned owl wings
beeswax candlelight              rocking
                         to a drum of hollowed cottonwood
                                                                                          & deerskin
Outside, cicadas pulsed and grew
                                                            in sync, synapses
of earth rising in their tymbal tones                                        buzz-humming over air sacs
                                                threading leaves and stars
I saw tawny feathers
                                    hold the hush
                                                           & aim of owls,        death—tender
                                                                                                                        where her breasts
were—the pink 
           lines like two closed
                                             eyes, seams, lips        sealed—brushed
by feathers that brush             night
air in perfect                                              silence.                             To be whole
she/we need this                crossing
                                                                  the animals with us
the missing parts                    
                                    under their wings

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Anne Haven McDonnell lives in Santa Fe, NM where she teaches as a full professor of Creative Writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts. A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts (2023) and MacDowell, she is the author is Breath on a Coal (Middle Creek Press), winner of the Halcyon Poetry Prize, runner-up for the ASLE book prize, and long-listed for The Laurel Prize, and the chapbook Living with Wolves from Split Rock Press. She is currently working as a co-author/co-editor on a Rocky Mountain Literary Field Guide, due out in 2026. Her poetry has been published in Orion Magazine, Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, The Georgia Review, Narrative Magazine, Nimrod Journal, Terrain.org and elsewhere. Anne Haven is a poetry editor for the online journal Terrain.org.