SONG FOR DIAGONAL SLEEPERS
By Megan Denton Ray
Start here, at the corners. Yes, body, here’s one moon-
sickle
one minnow
from each sea faithful ease of joints,
river rock and shade garden. I tried
to keep house to approach each morning
with a mouth full of yolk.
Please, oh please tilt me
limb to limb, axis slick and peeled my northeast
and southwest — yes, body
rub my hands in the ugly earth the flailing
of my toes run over by a pleasure stomp
driftwood backbone backbone
backbone,
one moon-sickle, one
minnow. A joy thing — start here.
Megan Denton Ray is the author of Mustard, Milk, and Gin (Hub City Press, 2020), winner of the 2019 New Southern Voices Poetry Prize. She is the recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize and holds an MFA from Purdue University. Her work has appeared recently or will soon in POETRY, The Sun, Salt Hill Journal, The Adroit Journal, Passages North, and elsewhere. She currently lives and teaches in Tennessee.
