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.