Stunt Double

BY MARGARET RAY

I do my own stunts.
             It’s rough work sometimes,
like when I had to get
             my shoulder and ribs broken
by that truck and still
             be there the next day
for the invalid hospital scenes,
             but I keep showing up.
Slapstick is a specialty—
             everyone likes to think they, too,
could walk face-first
             into a door that swings in,
not out, and make it look good,
             but these things are harder
than they appear.
             When it’s time to tap in
and get my heart broken so my heart
             can remain intact,
I remember why I’m here.
             I think of how I look
so exactly like me,
             how I’m the only one
for the job, especially
             on such short notice.
It’s a long, one-shot take,
             no chance to swap out
mid-air. You can’t see
             the safety harness because
the harness isn’t there.

Margaret Ray grew up in Gainesville, Florida. She is the author of Good Grief, The Ground (BOA Editions, 2023) which won the A. Poulin Jr. Poetry Prize, and was shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award. Her chapbook Superstitions of the Mid-Atlantic (2022) won a Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship Prize. Her poems have appeared in The Atlantic, The Nation, Best New Poets 2021, American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. A winner of the Third Coast Poetry Prize and a shortlister for the Montreal International Poetry Prize and the Bridport Prize (UK), she holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College and teaches in New Jersey. You can find more of her work at margaretbray.com

Next (Ellie Black) >

< Previous (Chelsea B. DesAutels)