October 2016 | poetry
They rarely snapped apart,
those French Gothic cathedrals,
encrypting clotted earth
as they sailed toward endless sky.
Occasionally one collapsed,
like Beauvais, from trying too hard,
or, like Saint Maclou, cluttered
and confused its lines, losing
the impossible coupling of soil and sun.
But most, hunkered down, buttresses flying,
opened their core to rainbowing light
as they set about piercing heaven.
Chartres did it best. Resolute and
grounded as a twin-peaked mountain,
it told its tender stained-glass stories
well enough to make a peasant weep.
It flouted abstract symmetry, one spire
staunchly romanesque, the other
soaringly flamboyant. One said,
My presence here is God in stone,
the other, I am the earthly gone to God .
Its vaulted center held, however,
and still, and still, is holding.
Lynn Hoggard
Lynn Hoggard has published five books: three French translations, a biography, and a memoir. Her poetry has appeared in 13th Moon, The Alembic, Atlanta Review, The Broken Plate, Clackamas Literary Review, Concho River Review, Crack the Spine, The Delmarva Review, Descant, Forge, Edison Literary Review, FRiGG, The Healing Muse, The MacGuffin, New Ohio Review, Sanskrit, Soundings East, Summerset Review, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Tower Journal, Weber: The Contemporary West, Westview, WestWard Quarterly, Wild Violet, and Xavier Review, among others.
October 2016 | poetry
We barely took any space,
maybe a foot square, you
placing my hands where they go
and knocking my feet with your toes—
who dances like this, anyway
(as comets careen into their own ice)?
Your favorite story about me: I’m
chained, at 3, to a tree. When you
return, my uncle—fed up with my roaming
in his oil—stilled me that way and
you removed the loose chains, carried me
inside to scrub my body like a rescued pelican
awash in petroleum. It was California
in the 60s—your brother, my sitter,
not much more than a child himself
(the moon bright enough to be visible from Mars).
The dancing seems easy, step-turn,
step-turn, and your smile surprises me.
I knew, before my grade school dance,
I caught on quickly. Nobody danced
with me that night at school. But earlier,
you and I, turning and rocking,
prepared me, made ready for that nobody.
We danced, hand-in-hand, me a prosthetic,
you counting steps with whatever music was on
(scattershot lights everywhere in a moment).
Joddy Murray
Joddy Murray’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in over 70 journals, including, most recently, The Broken Plate, DUCTS, Caliban Online, Existere, Lindenwood Review, Licking River, Meridian, McNeese Review, Minetta Review, Moon City Review, Moonshot Magazine, Painted Bride Quarterly, Pembroke Magazine, Southampton Review, Stickman Review, and Texas Review. He currently teaches writing and rhetoric in Fort Worth, Texas.
July 2016 | poetry
New Orleans broke my heart. So did Utah.
I’m the son of both and neither.
All these places break boys’ hearts.
Send them crying to their rooms on Sutter.
When I was young my dad collected frogs.
He dissected them. Kept them in glass jars.
Pressed quarters in my palm to love me.
The frogs stared at the world, unblinking.
I walked to town in roadwork season.
Smelled the bitumen and gripped the coins.
Love was the soft road leading from my father’s den.
I’m older now and I preserve things too.
Here’s the glass. Crystal’s my formaldehyde.
Tonight a man will come and kneel before me.
I’ll push his head back, trace his throat, and kiss him.
Then I’ll take the straightedge from my chest.
The scalpel stolen from the box below the frogs.
I will cut him open. Save him from New Orleans.
And Utah. The fog swirling outside the window.
by Graham Coppin
July 2016 | poetry
(a Tom Waits kind of drunk poem for
a poet friend who calls himself Moonface)
Sing Motherfucker! …Sing!
Like Moonface in the dark, in the cold,
‘cause that Jack’s off the track
he ain’t never coming back
…he had his long-johns on.
Nah, funerals ain’t funny,
but ya gotta laugh,
‘cause he ain’t had nothing from nobody
‘cept Sally once, or maybe Sue–
there’s two women with wishes
for more than the dishes
that just got old
cold Moonface
…with his long-johns on
Yeah, Sing Motherfucker! Sing!
–like the devil saying he’s sorry
after all these years
‘cause that Jack’s off the track
he ain’t never coming back
…he had his long-johns on.
by William Waters
William Waters is an associate professor, associate chair, and director of composition in the Department of English at the University of Houston Downtown. Along with Sonja Foss, he is coauthor of Destination Dissertation: A Traveler’s Guide to a Done Dissertation. His research and teaching interests are in writing theory and practice, the history of the English language, linguistics, and modern grammar.
July 2016 | poetry
Fragile girl; the delicate grass-blade’s dewily soft sheen
trances me, sends me into a liquid dream or reverie;
Novitius symbolum of I, the belfry, and you-
Great bell for the angelus, siphoning to my growerly
Every furrow and bone of the sphere’s celestial
stars; Belle’s water; “indicator of the reborn sun:”
The radiant pavonids of your eyes; you pull my dreams
Right from my throat, bestowing to my crown the gift;
Traumas eclipsed by divine ascendening frequencies
Of autotelically-wide, shy- blue translucent eyes,
Eyes I recognize to be just as true and soft as those
Of Hazel: sheathed in her bright robes, inscribing me
In rainbow body and jewels, dispelling samsara. Great
Mahayana vehicle; sweet recalling dreams
by Matthew Scott Bartlett
