Sandy Longhorn
You Taught Me Devastation
End of August
Dear Madame―
I confess, the brutal cargo carried in my veins
scuttles my breath, an illness indecipherable,
the diagnosis gone astray. The whitecoats
shake their heads & my heart is a saber of shame.
I cling to chaos at your direction. Find no
pattern in the blossom of whistles let loose
by the attached machines that try to track me,
to trace each rise and fall of good cells versus bad.
They fail. At night, I return to your tutorage.
Recite the root causes of loss: flame, water, wind, & ice.
There is no trumpet song of triumph for those
lost in the delta of disease. We crouch in shadows,
in the never-fully-dark. Madame, I beseech you.
Send on the next lesson. My exhaustion is complete.
―Your Studious
Sandy Longhorn is the author of Blood Almanac (Anhinga Press), which won the Anhinga Prize for Poetry. New poems are forthcoming or have appeared recently in 32 Poems, The Cincinnati Review, Crazyhorse, North American Review, Waccamaw, and elsewhere. Longhorn teaches at Pulaski Technical College, runs the Big Rock Reading Series, is an Arkansas Arts Council fellow, and blogs at Myself the only Kangaroo among the Beauty. (http://sandylonghorn.blogspot.com)
Return to November 2012 Edition
End of August
Dear Madame―
I confess, the brutal cargo carried in my veins
scuttles my breath, an illness indecipherable,
the diagnosis gone astray. The whitecoats
shake their heads & my heart is a saber of shame.
I cling to chaos at your direction. Find no
pattern in the blossom of whistles let loose
by the attached machines that try to track me,
to trace each rise and fall of good cells versus bad.
They fail. At night, I return to your tutorage.
Recite the root causes of loss: flame, water, wind, & ice.
There is no trumpet song of triumph for those
lost in the delta of disease. We crouch in shadows,
in the never-fully-dark. Madame, I beseech you.
Send on the next lesson. My exhaustion is complete.
―Your Studious
Sandy Longhorn is the author of Blood Almanac (Anhinga Press), which won the Anhinga Prize for Poetry. New poems are forthcoming or have appeared recently in 32 Poems, The Cincinnati Review, Crazyhorse, North American Review, Waccamaw, and elsewhere. Longhorn teaches at Pulaski Technical College, runs the Big Rock Reading Series, is an Arkansas Arts Council fellow, and blogs at Myself the only Kangaroo among the Beauty. (http://sandylonghorn.blogspot.com)
Return to November 2012 Edition