…….
Lost Lyric
Once Cretan girls used to dance
harmoniously like this,
soft-footed about the fair
altar…
They made for the tender grass. — Sappho’s fragment 16
…..….
In her best stories
she drank
blackberry wine
and danced
full of music
and summertime
tiny waist
high cheekbones
sharp eyes
so say the faded Polaroids with her
lilting scrawl: summer picnic, at the races
I did not know her to
be a dancer,
rocking in her
chair by the door,
house sealed against
the heat,
the cold;
her feet gnarled
with bunions,
her legs stiff,
having strayed
so far
so long
from tender grass.
……
This poem is from the chapbook strong female protagonist (Finishing Line Press), and is available at https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/strong-female-protagonist-by-heather-m-hoover/
……
Heather M. Hoover earned her Ph.D. at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, TN. Her poetry has appeared in Leaven, The Snapdragon Journal, and in The Southern Poetry Anthology. She is the author of Composition as Conversation: Seven Virtues for Effective Writing, and teaches English, Writing, and Humanities at a small liberal arts college in East Tennessee.
strong female protagonist considers relationships between and with women, meditating on the beauty and weight of female legacy. This collection looks closely at the lives of my mother, grandmother, and daughter, as well as my literary heroes—all protagonists of their own stories. These poems consider the lives we have lived, the choices we made, and the heady potential to make new ones. These poems explore what it means “to be” a strong female protagonist through the most quotidian of details—a bouquet of daffodils, an old photograph, even an insect in the windowsill. Together, these poems tell their own story of love, loss, wonder, and possibility.
The Paddock Review 