Diagnosis, and: Sotto Voce, and: Transposition

Diagnosis, and: Sotto Voce, and: Transposition Susanne Kort (bio) Diagnosis Later she came home & stuck her headInto their pillows; her bed took onA housely air, she stayed there immersedIn fatality while the rest of themTalked & sparred with the fellows in charge to whom she was No one—just a woman someone sent on,of indeterminate provenance, & turning into a nuisance. He tried knocking on her door,he knew she was home by the hill in the blankets & sometimes her feetstuck out as if to greet him& say Keep on trying.But the rest of her was too alert & intent upon dying [End Page 105] Sotto Voce To F. You could always say you might try to see it like a movie—or not exactly, because you flee routinelyfrom these kinds of scenes; but as if: you walk in to the mercifully darkened room & from there to here where you areis a universe: a clot of chairs & peopled heads & shiftings& murmurings—just the distance from the screen, just that alone—& one can atone at second hand for all the sins& omissions: the unmade calls & unheard screams, the legionsof crummy evasions by way of subject changed: we never seem to have time anymore (have you noticed?)to really get into things.—She would be that woman on the sofa—;languid but not negligee'd or marabou'd— No, pale as sin & wan, laid there by someonemore solicitous than one whose absence is not remarked uponby anyone that we can detect, as one scuttles forth to kiss the remains of the cheek not even proffered; not existingin recognisable form: & so this is my sister, busy with dying,eyeing me (up close) [End Page 106] Transposition To F. It was like the accomodation to the sloping floorYou lamented to begin with but came to kind of adore:The notion of making do, being able to, Girl Scoutian; the minor triumphOf you; your liberation, the body being the beginning, the shifting thingsAround: that Life is Biology for which no remedyExists: the turns & twistings of the flesh that used to beYour secret joy, into the finishings: the questions of focusingOn the biases, fat with brimming & very calm.Dying we always are. But dead.What does that mean? Susanne Kort Susanne Kort's poetry, prose, and translations have appeared in Grand Street, North American Review, Puerto del Sol, Indiana Review, Antioch Review, and other journals in the United States, Canada, the Caribbean, United Kingdom, and Ireland. She is a psychotherapist practicing in Jalisco, Mexico. Copyright © 2010 University of Nebraska Press

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