How Many?
Children need to die to solve this issue?
As if there were an answer, 14 more have left us, unfinished
essays, lunches, little things that made them
stronger day by day. The spirits of 138 children
since Newtown, is that too much to think about
when you close your eyes and there’s that lingering
feeling that somebody somewhere needs to be
let go from whatever it is that holds their head underwater,
but we ignore and ignore until we can’t any longer,
remove ourselves from what becomes
hostile conversation. There’s that aura of division
in every gleaming orifice in this country, and it is
hard to know what road if any leads to an office building in every city
with big signs that read: GUARANTEED BUY-BACK GUN DEPOSIT HERE,
or if we could go there to purge ourselves
of our guns without the threat of feeling
that we’re the ones about to be under attack.
How many parents must send their kids to school
knowing that today could be the last time
they see one another.
How many?
By Matthew Laverty
A poem from Disarm: A Themed issue Responding to Mass Shootings in America
Biography:
Matthew Laverty earned a BLA from the University of Massachusetts, Lowell where he studied creative writing under award winning poet Maggie Dietz and critically acclaimed author Andre Dubus III. His poems have appeared at Poetry Quarterly, FORTH Magazine, and elsewhere. You can find him on Twitter @MattLavPoems, and on his Tumblr site MattLavWrites.