Sex on Easter Morning

by Megan Denton Ray

Woman was God’s second mistake, Nietzche
says. This morning, I hold the insipid apple,
hotspots, a basket full of serpents. My husband

loves my yellow panties. I shove him
to the center of the bed and throw the white covers
back. I spread him out as a crucifix. Is this

sacrilegious? Crank and fogcutter, giddy-witted,
I slink down to start at the ankles. And up and up,
cool as custard. The kiln and wet-bulb of my body,

the parched, the water oven. I will allow him to enter.
I open my legs and Gethsemane pours out.
I hear a bell ringing in the distance. The hostas

in the front yard begin to unfold themselves. Then
the lilies, the blue flag iris. The secret of the aqueduct.
The song of the mockingbird in that dogwood tree.

We dine with a coyote—such speed, sore hips. Till
he splits the red cedar with his toes. Till my tunnels
are paved, hot as inner earth. Till a door flies open,

and tropical birds spill out. He falling fast, I falling
fast. Pepsi snapping in my glass. And what do the
headlines say? She is risen. She is risen indeed.

Megan Denton Ray is the author of Mustard, Milk, & Gin (Hub City Press 2020) which won the 2019 New Southern Voices Poetry Prize. She is the recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize and holds an MFA from Purdue University. Her work has appeared recently or will soon in Poetry, The Sun, Salt Hill Journal, The Adroit Journal, and elsewhere.  She lives and teaches in Tennessee.