Margaret Ray

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Margaret Ray

Archimedes, Get Out of the Tub

 
Grief has made me stupid

and I forget to tell my class

The Important Thing they must

remember. I cannot remember

what a dongle is for and words

I reach for take off like birds

from a fence post. I want to pour

my life into a different container,

but it’s still river water. Reverse

boatman, suggest my students helpfully.

You have a new memory,

says my phone. Eureka, says the shape

of the space inside me.
 

Margaret Ray reads “Archimedes, Get Out of the Tub”

 

Bertrande de Rols

 
If I here can testify to how
his body fits in mine,

the private dialect between us:
a house we build together,

when I say we live
in that house, tell me,

in what meaningful sense
is he not my husband?

Some people simply call this
revision. What are we to do

with our lives besides revise?
I tell you he came back better.
 

Margaret Ray reads “Bertrande de Rols”

 

Margaret Ray grew up in Gainesville, Florida. She is the author of GOOD GRIEF, THE GROUND (BOA Editions, April 2023, winner of the A. Poulin Jr. Poetry Prize selected by Stephanie Burt) and the chapbook SUPERSTITIONS OF THE MID-ATLANTIC (2022, selected by Jericho Brown for the 2020 Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship Prize). Her poems have appeared in Best New Poets 2021, Threepenny Review, Narrative, and elsewhere. A winner of the Third Coast Poetry Prize and a shortlister for the Montreal International Poetry Prize, she holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College and teaches in New Jersey. She’s on Twitter (for now) @mbrrray, and you can find more of her work at www.margaretbray.com