Katie's poem, Sighting Grief, originally appeared in Issue 52: In Transit.
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KATIE MANNING
SIGHTING GRIEF
a cento for Marthe Reed
There are fewer galaxies here:
there, here, lodged in time,
words dramatic beside the window
the way light opens day.
What I meant to say was
you’re gone,
but no voice came.
We part laughing and dead—
line and pause
like a code tapped through a wall—
a warning (maybe),
a long cry from there,
an ache that is not pain.
Note: The title, even lines, and final line come from Marthe Reed’s coastal geometries and (em)bodied bliss.The odd lines come from work by Emily Capettini, C. S. Carrier, J. Bruce Fuller, Katie Manning, Forrest Roth, and Ki Russell, who were Marthe’s doctoral students at UL-Lafayette
Photo by Pawel Nolbert on Unsplash
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Laurie Klein
May 01, 2020
Katie, I love this constellation of voices and lines, their collective, haunting span—the universe, the human heart, the eternal longing to make contact. Thank you!