Holograms Dancing

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.

Integrity

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.