Raye Hendrix

Bottomfeeder

in church I was told I was only
good for sinking      so as a child
I skipped Sunday school      brought
a girl from class down with me
and we slicked our small bodies
through the vent in the door
to the empty daycare      sucked
sweetmilk bottles meant for babies
since we still were babies too        
the butterfly of our hips had not
yet opened      with short hair
we still looked like little boys
in the first sex dream I remember
I was alone      a penis hung useless
between my adolescent legs      
unwieldy      gray and hungry
as a catfish      I had to feed myself     
and when I woke I knew I belonged
at the bottom of some murky depth     
needed a wider mouth      I still
don’t know whose body I belong to     
mine or the ones who’ve been
inside it      or the ones I’ve been
inside      desire like this should be
too slippery a thing to have fins
as sharp as these      if you hold me
by my softer parts I’ll still try to slice
open your palm      even when
you love me right     I thrash


Raye Hendrix is a writer from Alabama. Raye is the author of the chapbooks Every Journal is a Plague Journal (Bottlecap Press) and Fire Sermons (Ghost City Press). The winner of the Keene Prize for Literature (2019) and Southern Indiana Review’s Patricia Aakhus Award (2018), Raye’s work has appeared in Poetry Daily, 32 Poems, Shenandoah, Cimarron Review, Poetry Northwest, Zone 3, and elsewhere. Raye is currently a PhD student at the University of Oregon and the poetry editor of Press Pause Press.