Kennedy, Maggie

Hysteranthous

Featured Poetry, Spring 2022

Her parents are too busy following

along in their hymn books to notice

their pint-size daughter has escaped the pew.

She twirls down the aisle round

and round, leaps and pirouettes,

her tutu a glittering purple swirl,

heels of her gym shoes flickering rainbows.

Dance, little one, dance

before your mother, scurrying to retrieve you,

pulls you back.

The girl’s black curls slip from her ponytail

as she passes the plodding chorus,

a skip, spin she nears the altar.

I want to join her, shimmy and sway

along the pews. Just like I wanted to climb

the flowering magnolia outside church

to finger the leathery pink petals.

But I don’t. I didn’t.

I am not young enough or old enough

to dare embarrassment for a chance at rapture.

Dance, little one, dance.

Outside, precocious bloomers are coming to life.

Under this roof, only hesitant souls.

The priest looks up to see the nymph curtsying,

a sublime expression on her face.

A flash of annoyance in his eyes, or is it jealousy,

before he smiles at the mother bending

toward her child. All these years, perhaps,

he has been waiting for grace.

Dance, little one, dance.

Never forget you flowered

before you leafed.

Maggie Kennedy’s poems have appeared in Epiphany, Meat for Tea, Cloudbank, Atticus Review, and other publications. She lives in the Chicago suburbs with her family and works as an editor. She’d like to thank members of the LaGrange Writers Group for their help in refining this poem.