Home

 
              the elusive dark : slow curve
of a mother’s spine : riverbank
              solid enough to stand : home
a starsilver river of arms
 
              my mother’s riverbend is subtle
& soft : her arms wet firefly
              light : home the far shore of her heart
& i : the traveler boatless
 
                         //
 
              a green fish rises from my mother’s
water : shows me how to take apart
              my bones : how to break & reposition
them to make of me a boat :
 
              ribcage hull : femur mast : scaffolding
of tibia & spine : if i leak i fill the gaps
              with teeth : the fish says if i use my skin
for sails i won’t need my mother’s body :
 
              yes i say but who

                         will brush my hair


Raye Hendrix is a poet from Alabama. Raye earned a BA and MA in English from Auburn University and is an MFA candidate at the University of Texas in Austin, where she was a finalist for both the 2018 Keene Prize for Literature and the 2018 Fania Kruger Fellowship in Writing, and where she serves as the Online Content and Web Editor for Bat City Review. Raye was an honorable mention for poetry in both Southern Humanities Review’s Poetry Prize Honoring Jake Adam York in 2014 and AWP’s 2015 Intro Journals Project, and received grants to attend the Juniper Summer Writing Institute in 2016. Raye's work has appeared or is forthcoming in Southern Indiana Review, The Chattahoochee Review, Shenandoah, The Pinch, Cherry Tree, and elsewhere.