| Katja |
The
2River View, 5.2 (Winter 2001) |
Linda
Sutton Dies
radio
producer, writer of Brenda
Starr,
in divinity school at the time of her death
Still I remember coming to the life
courting the cancer even on the wire—
balanced, waves passing right
through me. I thought
nothing of it—cutouts, radio's fantasy
unspoken like the pillowtalk of ghosts;
that was my tragic error. Brenda knew
—watching me from the sidelines—
how the hosts
are all of us, with newsprint on our hands.
All of us, who, as if in trouble, run
hot in impossible clothes, through high contrast,
face sharp with shadow. Look lively, sit, don't ask
who comes forth in the dawn.... Venus, no Starr,
blocks all our light, whispers our lives awake—
we fear her voice, the hiss
on the unmarked dial
some say are messages
from Beyond. We take
dots and we make a picture.
So, with words,
how will a prayer be their final form?
We could argue all night, Brenda would say,
Brenda would just—what
makes a woman real?
When is she not
a girl? When they say
cancer, shaking their heads?
Then there's the Sun,
rising on every man who, every day,
looks down to see the smudges
on his hands guilty
still as the Lady
as the Starr
writes in her notebook. What mere mortal man
cannot erase, a stone pushed up a hill,
castle of sand, made up of tiny dots,
ink from the Pointillist beyond the stands....
catch as catch conscience. What, have we forgot
how, like the shadows on the wall, we took
black/white and static
till we Turned
to Look?
  
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