Sandy Longhorn
Poetry
Sandy Longhorn has received the Porter Fund Literary Prize for Arkansas authors and the Collins Prize from the Birmingham Poetry Review. She is the author of three books of poetry: The Alchemy of My Mortal Form, The Girlhood Book of Prairie Myths, and Blood Almanac. Her poems have appeared in The Cincinnati Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, North American Review, Oxford American, Thrush, and elsewhere. Longhorn teaches in the Arkansas Writer’s MFA program at the University of Central Arkansas, where she directs the C.D. Wright Women Writers Conference.
Not Another Dead Woman as Plot Device
on the latest police procedural. Her blonde
hair fans out in a bloodied halo
against the red cobblestone and a fine rain
glosses her skin. They’ve arranged her limbs
in pinwheel fashion and tilted back
her sculpted chin to give the camera
access to a lithe, vulnerable neck, the wound
kept out of sight, alluded to as a strike
to the back of her head. Enough to end
her life but never a disfiguring blow—
her character nothing but a pawn
to up the ante of tragedies suffered
by the older, white male detective.
They are linked, of course, romantically,
and if she’d only listened, followed orders
without question, understood his deeper,
unstated plan, he’d have saved her.
Instead, he rises from his crouch
of grief, tears held back, and vengeance
ennobles his quest for the archvillain.
The showrunners know viewers tune in
in higher numbers when the damsel,
no longer in distress, is dead.
“ I love to watch mysteries and police procedurals, especially those with strong female characters, but have had, over the years, to boycott any number of shows I was enjoying when a lead female character has been unceremoniously cut down. Of course, I know this happens when the actress is leaving the show, but I’ve found that male characters, with actors in the same position, are habitually promoted, transferred, or allowed to resign. ”