Lesley Clinton

En Pointe

A leg in buoyant degagé,

Brisk pirouettes like swirling leaves,

Each arabesque lean as a ray

Of light. Just so, the dancer weaves

The incorporeal and cleaves

To the ideal with human weight.

Stretched to the max, the dancer grieves

The point where art transcends our state.

A knight hides wounds won in the fray

Under his breastplate and his greaves;

The dancer’s vamp and ribbons play

This part, a lie the crowd believes.

The dancer, who so lightly heaves

Her frame and throws wide beauty’s gate,

By bunion, bruise, and break perceives

The point where art transcends our state.

And comfort cannot tempt away

This champion whose grit achieves

The gleaming grail, whose relevé

Pins gravity, whose grace relieves

Us of our unbelief. With sleeves

Rolled up, God sculpts this paladin’s fate

And with the touch of grace reprieves

The point where art transcends our state.

Now, even as her form deceives

By fluttering leap and gliding gait,

The vessel calls forth and conceives

The point where art transcends our state.

Lesley Clinton, scheduled to receive her MFA in Creative Writing from University of St. Thomas in May 2025, is author of the chapbook Calling the Garden from the Grave, which placed 2nd among books of creative verse in the National Federation of Press Women 2021 Communications Contest. In 2024 Clinton was named a runner-up for the St. Austin Review Prize in Poetry. In 2019 she received the Lucille Johnson Clarke Memorial award from Houston Poetry Fest. Her poetry and book reviews have appeared in publications such as America, Dappled Things, THINK, Mezzo Cammin, The Windhover, Presence, Reformed Journal, Christianity & Literature, Texas Poetry Calendar, Solum Journal, Modern Age, and Ekstasis Magazine.