Self-Portrait in Crayola, Yeast and Violets
I
Green and red, blue. What else do I need?
Black, I need night in the box of crayons
sucking every color into itself the way
despair sucks every breath out of the room.
II
Everyone I ever met swims in me
whether I want them to or not.
Desire, permission, fondness, indifference
seem beside the point—my membership resides,
becoming different people in me
than they are in their own bodies.
Sometimes I prefer my version to the real thing.
Sometimes they improve me against my will,
coloring the portrait I respond to in the mirror,
working their hands in my dough.
III
What kind of bread am I? Pumpernickel, rye.
Dense, texture that recalls the dirt it came from, seedy,
a lump slowly passing down the mysteries of the throat.
Soaked in broth that simmers for three days, I crumble,
an ode to dissolution, a flower that wants the light
to bend back its petals until they leave the nest and fly.
They won’t make it far. But far enough
to leap from the ledge of their old life and fall.
IV
For a couple of hours, I’ll remember
the pattern they made against the ground,
but like everything else I swore to love,
the memory will fade so fast
I’ll wonder who’s emptying me out,
and all I’ll be left with—a great gift—
is a faint impression of how seeing the pattern felt.
Picking Myself Up Off the Floor
The sun walks away from me
and the dark says hello again
and I spin through my memories
like arguments against
my continued existence
until the cacophony is deafening
so I close my eyes, I plug my ears
and I scream until the dark hums
and my head clears and the frogs pause
and the man in the moon
looks up from his book
to consider my soliloquy
and all the things about to happen
line up like urges in my hands.
Ricky Ray is a disabled poet, critic and editor who lives on the outskirts of the Hudson Valley. He is the author of Fealty (Diode Editions, 2019) and the forthcoming chapbooks: Quiet, Grit, Glory (Broken Sleep Books) and The Sound of the Earth Singing to Herself (Fly on the Wall Press). He is the founding editor of Rascal: A Journal of Ecology, Literature and Art, and his awards include the Cormac McCarthy Prize, the Ron McFarland Poetry Prize, a Liam Rector fellowship, and a Zoeglossia fellowship, among others. He was educated at Columbia University and the Bennington Writing Seminars, and can be found hobbling in the hills with his old brown dog, Addie.