Brenda Sutton Rose

Songs. Books. Poetry. Paintings. These things reveal truth. I believe lies and truth are tangled together.

When a man's running, he seldom looks back.

When his wounds cut too deep for the blues--when he couldn't sing himself out of his own sorrow--when he was too wounded to shimmy his fingers over piano keys--he came to the healing waters of the Alapaha River. And on the river he recounted his sins, confessing to the ancient rhythmic flow of the current. Communion.

The truth had lacerated him to the bone, had punctured his heart, and had ripped through his soul. The truth had slain him and tended to his wounds. The truth had hated him and loved him. The truth had opened his eyes to his own faults.

A song rises up from the belly of my pastand rocks me in the bosom of buried memories.

STAINSWith red clay between my toes,and the sun setting over my head,the ghost of my mother blows in,riding on a honeysuckle breeze, oh lord,riding on a honeysuckle breeze.Her teeth, the keys of a piano.I play her grinning ivory noteswith cadenced fumbling fingers,splattered with paint, textured with scars.A song rises up from the belly of my pastand rocks me in the bosom of buried memories.My mama__ dress bears the stains of her life:blueberries, blood, bleach, and breast milk;She cradles in her arms a lifetime of love and sorrow;Its brilliance nearly blinds me.My fingers tire, as though I've played this song for years.The tune swells red, dying around the edges of a setting sun.A magnolia breeze blows in strong, a heavenly taxi sent to carry my mother home. She will not say goodbye.For there is no truth in spoken farewells.I am pregnant with a poem,my life lost in its stanzas.My mama steps out of her dressand drops it, an inheritance falling to my feet.She stands alone: bathed, blooming,burdened with nothing of this world.Her body is naked and beautiful,her wings gray and scorched,her brown eyes piercing the brown of mine.I watch her departure, her flapping wings:She doesn__ look back, not even once,not even to whisper my name: Brenda.I lick the teeth of my piano mouth.With a painter__ hands,with a writer__ handswith rusty wrinkled hands,with hands soaked in the joys,the sorrows, the spillsof my mother__ life,I pick up eighty-one years of stainsAnd pull her dress over my head.Her stains look good on me.

As he farmed, hard labor left his hands callused, the sun bleached his hair, his face leathered, and his heart throbbed with music.

There__ secrets hiding inside this six-string just waitin_ for somebody to find __m and turn __m into music.

When you scratch these guitars, they bleed.

These babies ain__ just guitars; these babies are living, breathing instruments.

A real musician ain__ gonna choose his own guitar like an evil master choosing his slave. The guitar will choose his master and when he does, you__l know it.

The guitar poured out its soul, its history, its dreams, its pain, its victories, its secrets. The guitar__ strings purred with blues and ended with a haunting solitary song with no lyrics.

The guitar breathed. It inhaled and exhaled, and music filled the shop as the instrument picked the heartbreak of generations.

The place cast a spell on me, a lovely spell that seduced me one one breath at a time.

My mother__ dress bears the stains of her life:blueberries, blood, bleach, and breast milk;She cradles in her arms a lifetime of love and sorrow;Its brilliance nearly blinds me.

Kevin knew he had to always outrun the enemy inside him, and if that meant playing football, he'd do it. During puberty, he had taken off running and found too late that he couldn't stop. In dreams that turned into nightmares he ran in fear, ripped from sleep in a sweat, shouting,"Run!

He takes a draw on a cigarette, blows out a smoky ghost. I reach to catch the phantom in my hands, but it eludes me. I've been trying to catch a ghost for as long as I can remember.

The wind whirls and whistles and strip pink blooms from the mimosas, scatters twigs, broken limbs, pine needles and pine cones across our yard, and robs the pecan trees of a thousand leaves. The storm eventually dies, but the bruised trees continue to weep into the night, still shimmering with dewy leaves when the sun comes up the next morning.