Local News from Someplace Else. Marjorie Maddox
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stormed past, for just a second,
turned those puppy eyes
on something else. Such loyalty,
you’d hate to put him down. What does it matter—
gun propped against the wall,
you, a veteran? I’ve heard it before,
typed up the medical reports
seconds before that other gunshot,
the one aimed for the head.
Safe
My baby and I stay home
from the funeral for the murdered child,
unrecognizably battered and stabbed
in last week’s news photos.
The police arrive early
at the church, the estranged wife
and husband, separated by rows of pews,
glare at photographers, suspect
each other. They have both
aimed guns. My husband lights
church candles around the girl’s enlarged
classroom photo, prays
for us. What is safe lurks
nowhere near, doubt encrypting
fear, the way we cross
ourselves in our cloistered home.
We stare nightly at neighbors
walking too close to the nursery window,
too close to the woods
where the girl was found,
her arms criss-crossed just so
as if by a parent who can
no longer sleep.
Fifth-grader Imagined Taking Over School
–Newspaper Headline; Wellsboro, PA
All the safe, small towns—
gas streetlights silly in retrospect—
proclaim surprise. What else
when their children’s open
veins stain the school tiles?
Here the cornstalks stay calm;
the cost-of-living low?
The cobblestone streets empty out
from all but spectators shooting cameras,
murder and media sole companions
in this former tourist-attraction for tranquility.
Eventually, summer skateboarders
will again hunt back roads,
barefoot teens will dive
into abandoned swimming holes,
grade-schoolers at bat will boast
that they were there, that day,
in the hallway, the cafeteria,
the next classroom over.
On the hottest day
when a small town’s boredom sizzles
into the limbs of its children,
they will wonder what it was like to aim,
to hit the target fast and accurately,
to explode in the unfamiliar dazzle
of forbidden city lights.
The Good Mother Hides From Photographers
All week they’ve stolen her daughter’s face,
rolled it up, delivered it in late editions
to each waiting neighbor, all of whom
are quoted passionately as saying,
“She comes from a good family.
We don’t understand.”
Neither does she, hiding behind
her just-washed curtains,
the family portraits eyeing her disgrace.
Reporters ring the bell,
wait for her good manners
to reclaim her.
It is time for school,
her daughter appropriately housed
behind evenly spaced bars,
her unsure lips as complex as fingerprints.
Even this is a photographic exhibit
with the wrong captions.
Behind her 8 x 10 door,
the good mother develops
polite excuses, snaps
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