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.