by John RC Potter (February 2026)
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60 years you’ve waited to have your day.
For decades, you were mostly forgotten.
The Voice of Broadway, forever silenced.
Your glory days are just gathering dust.
This poem is a tribute to your fine work.
An attempt to honour your memory.
What’s My Line, JFK, the FBI:
Dorothy, the woman who knew too much.
Was there any substance to your search, or
were you trapped in the cobweb of details?
From the top, you tumbled down far below.
Your Manhattan, where you both lived and died.
Claim: the biggest scoop of the century.
It is unknown what you said you knew.
Look! East 68th at Park Avenue,
has been named Dorothy Kilgallen Way.
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Sacrosanct Sundays
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These sacrosanct Sundays, they are the best.
It is my favourite day of the week.
Classical music on the radio.
There is a peaceful calmness to this place.
The word ‘Sacrosanct’ comes from the Latin:
‘sacrosanctus,’ both sacred and holy.
Consecrated, inviolable, blessed.
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But these sacrosanct Sundays
are numbered and flying by.
Calendars keep their tally,
telling cautionary tales.
What began must also end.
This pilgrim must return home,
missing what he once possessed.
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My body will be across the ocean.
My heart will continue its devotion.
That girl will never be far from my mind.
One can’t lose what was never left behind.
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Table of Contents
John RC Potter is an international educator from Canada, living in Istanbul. He has experienced a revolution (Indonesia), air strikes (Israel), earthquakes (Turkey), boredom (UAE), and blinding snow blizzards (Canada), the last being the subject of his story, “Snowbound in the House of God” (Memoirist). Recent prose publications include “Letter from Istanbul” (The Montreal Review) & “A Day in May 1965” (Erato Magazine); recent poetry publications include “From Vaisler Brothers to Tel Aviv” (New English Review) & “Chiaroscuro” (Strangers and Karma Magazine). The author’s story, “Ruth’s World” (Fiction on the Web) was a Pushcart Prize nominee. His children’s book, The First Adventures of Walli and Magoo, is scheduled for publication.
Follow NER on Twitter @NERIconoclast
2 Responses
What does the poem have to do with Dorothy Kilgallen?
The poem is an acknowledgment of her getting a street named after her, the point clearly made in the final two lines as well as in the accompanying photograph.