Poetry |

“Fake News Bus Stop Prayer”

Fake News Bus Stop Prayer

 

Although most mornings we only talk about whether it feels like

snow or just allow the silence to grow between us

 

while our kids whip the air with willow branches, making wide Z’s

with three quick strokes, today Indigo’s dad Pat was on a tear,

 

fired up after ABC News aired a report called Slaughter

in Syria using footage from a Kentucky machine gun shoot,

 

an event, we learned, he attends every year in order to unleash

full-automatic fire into dishwashers rigged with propane tanks.

 

There are things to say, all of them better than what I managed

in the moment, which was a few muttered words intended

 

to derail his fake news rant & pull those of us gathered at the end

of Orchard Drive back from the brink of needing to respond

 

to rage we didn’t share. Neighbor Pat, from within the absolute

silence of this page, I’ll confess I hope never again to hear you

 

describe what it’s like to spray bullets into refrigerators, speed boats,

barrels of fuel. And yet, who am I to pretend to know nothing

 

of the pleasure of ruin, especially after the Tri-County Fair,

where I forked over a few extra bucks in order for my family to watch

 

the school bus smash-up derby, where my sticky blue wristband

proclaimed yes to the wreckage, to wincing & mock groans, yes

 

to a hymn of broken glass where the point was good riddance

& to see our look-both-ways world shattered, to stalk & batter

 

& T-bone some chump, then back up & floor it again? To bellow

Yeah, baby! as my Oliver did, cheering even louder

 

when the #19 caught fire, its flames lapping across the hood,

making the airhorn blare its mournful time-out cry

 

so that the firemen could trudge in from the sidelines

without much urgency, as if phoning it in, as if saying

 

this shit happens all the time. See? Pat whom I barely know,

whom I’ve twice seen wearing a Gun Control Means

 

Using Both Hands T-shirt, I could do better by you.

If I wanted to rummage for some paltry common ground,

 

I’m guessing we could both agree too much shit happens

all the time, that our sidelines are empty of anyone

 

ready to step in, & that another form of fake news is pretending

you are the you in a poem you’ll never read. This morning,

 

post-bus stop drop off, it’s worth remembering we both hate

that guy who once gunned his Beamer past the school bus

 

& if neither of us believe prayer or poetry or any other word

for casting words into silence is sufficient to keep us safe,

 

maybe we could admit we share more than weather,

wreckage, daily farewells. Each afternoon, we stand together

 

on one scrappy length of grass until the bus returns

at 3:25 on the dot & that one kid in the backseat either mimes

 

little pistol shots at my face or flaps her little wrists in a gesture

of goodbye mixed with an attempt at flight as Laurie the driver

 

unfolds her sign, flashing her all’s-well thumbs-up that means

not just have-at-it, but go stumble-racing, backpacks jostling,

 

across the asphalt in madcap joy-relief. Neighbor Pat, I know

I’ll never share any of this with you, but for what it’s worth

 

tomorrow, I swear, I want to mention at least half of the two-line

benediction I found on the machine gun range’s website

 

thanks to you. It begins The shoot takes place rain or shine

& ends The Good Lord willing, the creek doesn’t rise.

 

Contributor
Matt Donovan

Matt Donovan is the author of two collections of poetry – Vellum (Mariner 2007) and Rapture & the Big Bam (Tupelo Press 2017) as well as a book of lyric essays, A Cloud of Unusual Size and Shape: Meditations on Ruin and Redemption (Trinity University Press 2016). He is the recipient of a Whiting Award, a Rome Prize in Literature, a Pushcart Prize, a Creative Capital Grant, and an NEA Fellowship in Literature. He serves as the Director of the Poetry Center at Smith College.

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