"I set desire / on fire / and she screamed/ I couldn't tell / if the scream / was agony / or ecstasy

what's the difference?" - From 'What's Left'

"and when we settle into our dens at night, we talk of you, as one might talk of a cupped hand, fading slowly, the rest of the body long departed: a rusty bucket, offering water-all that's left of a god. " - From 'Somewhere in Indiana'

Ricky Ray entwines the beauty of the world and his love of life with the weight of physical pain he shoulders daily, in this stunning chapbook which urges you to find new meaning in nature's mysterious workings: "Every time I look up/ into a canopy, I see a mind at work."

In The Sound of the Earth Singing to Herself, Ricky Ray invokes the animalistic yet the utterly, undeniably humane. Visiting the most intimate corners of memory, this is a chapbook that promises linguistic prowess and the healing - however raw - of the ache of living. From Indiana, Florida, and Oklahoma to the inescapable moment of our own death, the moment the sun sinks below the horizon, the moment 'the cancer / bloomed like an angry / flower in her liver', Ray's language is masterful, transfixed on elevating the mundane and exposing every private moment of our existence. - Kayla Jenkins, Writer