“I am busy seeing,” declares the reverent and ever-curious speaker of Mustard, Milk, & Gin. In this haunting debut, Megan Denton Ray unflinchingly sifts through the sediment of a girlhood ruled by service. Everything in these poems sweats—the sunflower working hard for its first pair of leaves, the sister feeding her twin like a father, the men and women working in a community ravaged by the opioid crisis. With tender restraint, Ray’s poems question the infallibility of devoutness while finding solace in the classification of the natural world. What results is a powerhouse voice that chooses preservation above all else. No poppy, wild carrot, or honeycomb is too small a treasure as Ray weaves stories of loss and mercy through both dreamscapes and domestic scenes alike. The forgettable and forgotten ignite--these poems are gifts of curiosity and care. Mustard, Milk and Gin is the winner of the 2019 New Southern Voices Poetry Prize as selected by G.C. Waldrep.