Judith Cody’s poetry is published in more than 135 journals and has won many national awards, including second prize in the national Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition. Her poetry chapbook was a finalist in Bright Hills Press’s national competition. She has won Atlantic Monthly and Amelia awards; her poems were quarterfinalists in the Pablo Neruda Prize in Poetry and were cited for honorable mentions by the National League of American Pen Women. She edited the PEN Oakland anthology Fightin’ Words and wrote the internationally notable biography of composer Vivian Fine: A Bio-Bibliography and Eight Frames Eight.

Learning to Leap Over the Bulls*
By Judith Cody

Body,
no proboscis
for me
no antlers_—
or other
odd ends.
Body,
tucked into yourself
sheer symmetry.
Fly over
the bull’s
wide, pointed horns.
Fly high over
the cumbersome beast
leave him behind
wide-eyed, astonished.

*The island of Crete was the center of Minoan civilization circa 3,000-1,000 B.C. Nude girls tumbled over a bull’s horns in a ceremony depicted on wall paintings at Cnossus.