The Square Halo

by Laura Reece Hogan

For Leslie

We find them only rarely in iconography,

given to those still living but presumed

saint, the round reserved for those

who have already ascended the land of light.

I’d never seen one before, but she wears

the points translucently, her real one

almost comical against the square cardboard

cut-outs covered with gold glitter, an Instagram

prop at the conference. She’s warring against

brain cancer, yet young, an unswerving smile

despite the collapse, terminal

velocity pulling at the corners. Her sandy hair,

cropped and curling, hides glimmers. Her skin

glows with a fluorescence I’ll never forget,

as if something burns beneath, grave

illness or celestial bonfire, or both. Her gaze

aims both here and beyond. One foot on the floor,

one on the stair. We speak briefly of her poetry,

of hearing the new music, and she tilts

her ear upward. Her slouchy jacket and jeans

seem incongruous, too flammable,

       with her singeing this way,

         in a corona of corners

multiplying in radiance to round.

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Laura Reece Hogan is the author of Butterfly Nebula (Backwaters, University of Nebraska Press, 2023), winner of the Backwaters Prize in Poetry, Litany of Flights (Paraclete Press, 2020), winner of the Paraclete Poetry Prize, the chapbook O Garden-Dweller (Finishing Line Press), and the nonfiction book I Live, No Longer I (Wipf & Stock). She is one of ten poets featured in the anthology In a Strange Land (Cascade Books). Her poems have appeared in America, Scientific American, Sugar House Review, RHINO, The Christian Century, Verse Daily and elsewhere.