Margaret Ray, raised in Gainesville, Florida, is the author of the chapbook Superstitions of the Mid-Atlantic (Poetry Society of America, 2021). She earned an MFA in poetry from Warren Wilson College and teaches in New Jersey.

After

by Margaret Ray

L comes over & we walk turns around the block—
this is what we’re allowed.

A cardinal appearing, flash of red—
(something she says? How beautiful?)—


& this is what beauty is for—
a trap to make us stay.


We leave a mess, don’t we.


I repeat her words & it feels
almost like fluency, like belief, almost,


almost like love. We’re still alive
here. We live on the ground.

On the ground, mostly.


Read on . . .

“By Land,” a poem by Tyree Daye