Sandy Cameron’s Magic Violin

By: John Dos Passos Coggin

Rigid as Notre-Dame. Queening. Cruel.

Stradivarius, you pilloried the joy of my youth.

You and my instructor who climbed out of your

crypts to judge my music with gargoyle smiles.

Stradivarius, I wanted to hack you to your last toothpick.

Hang you by your quivering strings before a medieval mob.

Throw you into the crackling hearth at Christmas

and invite the neighbors to admire the musical yule log.

Until I saw Sandy restring the violin’s anachronisms

into a smoke-eyed mélange of ballet and punk rock.

She charges past all obstacles to popular classical performance

like a parkour champ. She stops. Her eyes flash with sorcery.

Sometimes her bow is a calligraphy pen, inking elegant serifs in the air.

Sometimes she raises her bow high like Napoleon raising his saber before battle.

Is this the same instrument that pacified

the palace air of Europe’s absolute monarchs,

soothing their rare snatches of guilt?

She haunts the stage with her ghostly locomotion.

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John Dos Passos Coggin is a writer based in Alexandria, Virginia. His poetry has appeared in Pangyrus, Cathexis Northwest Press, and The Blue Mountain Review. He wrote a biography of Florida statesman Lawton Chiles, Walkin’ Lawton. He also co-manages the John Dos Passos literary estate and serves on the advisory board of the John Dos Passos Society.