God's Own
by Lynn Hoggard Lynn Hoggard

Lynn Hoggard received her Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of Southern California and currently work at Midwestern State University, where she is a professor of English and French and the coordinator of humanities. In 2003, the Texas Institute of Letters awarded her the Soeurette Diehl Fraser award for best translation.

For several years, she was an arts writer for the Times Record News in Wichita Falls and wrote more than six hundred articles, features, and reviews. She has published five books: three French translations, a biography, and a poetry anthology. Her poetry has appeared in 13th Moon, Clackamas Literary Review, Concho River Review, Descant, New Ohio Review, The Oklahoma Review, Soundings East, Summerset Review, Wild Violet, and Xavier Review, among others.

The coupled form's the norm
in our zoology—
the yin cleaves to the yang,
the male melds with the female
until their coupling shapes
each partial creature whole.

Too long have isolates
defined us; now,
not opposition: composition—
body not a foe of mind:
mind suffused with body,
body overflowing mind.

Either takes the hand of or
to stand together; both joins and.
Our reason's just a path we take
until it splits in two, then loops
its way back into other, showing
all the parts assembled, whole.

Not linear or liquid,
let our two joinings be
a cup of that brims with water.
Let's drain it now—completely—
celebrating our cosmology
and God's androgyny.


What do you think? Please send us your comments, including the name of the work you are commenting on.
Permalink to the Amarillo Bay issue containing this work.