If he could do one thing, he could run. He had spent his life running, secrets spitting at his back.

— Brenda Sutton Rose

I’m not made for city streets. My brogans drop soil from the field behind me, each grain of dirt like a seed revealing who I am. My heart belongs in the country. I’m a farmer, and I was shaped in the fields.

— Brenda Sutton Rose

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!

— Brenda Sutton Rose

Life can surprise you. You want something with every ounce of blood that flows in your veins, and then one day it's yours. Right there before you. Everything. You break out in a cold sweat with the undeniable realization that what you really want is home. Sometimes finding home is a long time coming. A long journey.

— Brenda Sutton Rose

My mama steps out of her dress and 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’t look back, not even once, not even to whisper my name

— Brenda Sutton Rose

My mother’s 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.

— Brenda Sutton Rose

She struts into the hair salon, her mouth filled with a rotten egg of gossip, unshelled, filled with decay. As soon as she sits down she bites into the shell, and the stink of her lies fills the air, its goo dripping down her chin. With her new haircut she exits, leaving behind the putrid evidence that she’s as corrupt as the egg of lies she spread.

— Brenda Sutton Rose

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

— Brenda Sutton Rose

STAINS With 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 notes with cadenced fumbling fingers, splattered with paint, textured with scars. A song rises up from the belly of my pa stand rocks me in the bosom of buried memories. My mama’s 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 dress and 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’t look back, not even once, not even to whisper my name: Brenda. I lick the teeth of my piano mouth. With a painter’s hands, with a writer’s hands with rusty wrinkled hands, with hands soaked in the joys, the sorrows, the spills of my mother’s life, I pick up eighty-one years of stains And pull her dress over my head. Her stains look good on me.

— Brenda Sutton Rose

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

— Brenda Sutton Rose