Offering
on how we restore justice
Pull this deep down
below bones of before
back to circles maybe
back to fire of reckoning
that centered aching eyes
some stone or feather passed
between hands
something that knew
how to hold harm
how to weigh it well
call it
alternative sentencing
restorative justice
a different way of hearing
not lawyers duking it out
through the bars of our legal system
leaving us all caged, kneeling
before Judge-Jury-God
a different way of hearing
call it courage to know
healing is not meted out in
sentences punctuated by
gavel pound
echoing into hollow room
justice just might be found
in the lyric of a circle,
or a rhyme scheme of poets
holding some small stone or feather
in our hands
a place
we might reimagine
the world we
mean to pass on
By Hazel Kight Witham
A poem from Disarm: A Themed issue Responding to Mass Shootings in America
Biography:
Hazel Kight Witham is a writer, teacher, activist, and artist whose work can be found in Bellevue Literary Review, Rising Phoenix Review, Angels Flight, Zoetic Press’s NonBinary Review, Lunch Ticket and Lady/Liberty/Lit. As a proud public school teacher, she loves listening to young people and challenging them to think more critically and creatively about their place in the world they wish to live in.