Setting Lemon Curd
BY MEGAN DENTON RAY
“The hands of the Almighty are so often to be found
at the ends of our own arms.” –Sister Monica Joan
My in-laws think I’m godless. They doubt my lemon curd.
I say, but watch me cultivate and is my hunger not made
by God? I’ve gone to the grocery again for good butter
and eggs. Here I am at home now, cracking open
one speckled egg or—a small reservoir in my chest.
Out pours a hard-red amaryllis, my body freesia
dinging along the gas pedal toward church. Toward the field
of cattle. Toward groundwater madness, gravy sap.
Toward pie! I say, this is what all lemons want to be
when they grow up! I say, hallelujah it is well. God
sees beyond the three gushing windows of my body: ribby,
spindleshanked, sour-faced—sliding my hand
across a chilling jar. Listen to the cows. The one hawk.
The thinly sliced beating heart. The kitchen is wild
with six alarms. Then it is shiny sugar and acid. Then
it is finished. I catch a glimpse of myself
at daybreak—drip-drying, leafless. At the center of my belly,
wrapped in a basket: many lemons. Many wooden spoons.
The Bonnie Sun
BY MEGAN DENTON RAY
Sincerely: what is more intimate than swimming
in the ocean with your beloved? O God, the slick.
The spray. I think of my ex-lover, the last man
to hold me—a wrapped parcel—in salty water.
Sun-wet and smelling of limeade, my legs wrapped
around him as he boosted me over the waves. I think
of him, my first real sexual partner, and feel full
of jellyfish. Can I? What if? Our weightlessness,
our whistle-thick tongues, heads back in laughter. Maybe
the sea itself is sexual by nature. Sincerely: the swell
is mighty. Fish hooks are pushed through my lobes
and someone on the shore is shrieking. The salt settles
in my mouth. It’s complicated and biblical—this big bone
lick, this allegiance to the first man who touched me
and felt proud. First man of jewel-bright hardness—
of mustard, milk, and gin. Jesus, come quick. I’m hungry
and I’ve learned how to speak the language:
a cosmic heaving. An orange bucket full of eels.
