Lee Kathryn Hodge is a writer and visual artist whose work has appeared in Granta, Thrush, Heavy Feather Review, Euphony, Heartwood, The William & Mary Review, Oberon, Clinch Mountain, After Hours, Mouth and The Tulane Review. She is a current doctoral candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Milwuakee.
When poems are tied together, as they are in this work as two heroic sonnet crown sequences, it's hard to pull poems from their place and set them apart. Yet, to give you a sample, here are two poems from the collection. Also, here is an audio file of Hodge reading one of the sequences from the book.
From Horizons
IX.
Beneath the surface of the water
I trade ocean for lake.
Saline, brackish, fresh
long ago having forgotten
everything I learned by
reading the world like a snakeskin.
Now I barely want what I want
some twist has gone wrong
inside me, and I crave bad.
I am so terribly infinite
ever since you ripped
the fabric of the reality
you passed through.
We mourn you imperfectly.
From Krater
I.
And then the human clay
of a pit firing on the horizon
near Horicon Marsh
drooled ashes
from the overcast sky
above us, walking
where grass had been mowed
we followed
the expected path
our labored movement
stilling the tree swallows,
perfect as little dioramas
wearing midnight-colored cloaks
of star matter.