Since legislation is too much to ask
1_ Chalkboards hush one another
2_ lunches gently rot in the tray guns click
3_ like a night of endless crickets
4_ while new mothers nurse tongue at nipple
5_ not thinking finger to trigger
6_ No child is waiting to be gone
7_ Their afternoons melting like a bucket of ice
8_ I can’t write a poem with a diamond inside
9_ worthless sentiment from pressure even while
10_ a friend looks at my baby a girl and half-Asian
11_ and says I made her life more difficult
12_ I’m supposed to write a child with a poem inside
13_ It will have everything: Good grades and barrettes
14_ and swings at recess and space
15_ to hide under desks
16_ A poem will welcome her like others open armed—
17_ Columbine Sandy Hook Uvalde
18_ It will finally understand children
19_ are the target audience.
Amanda Hartzell is the author of The Heart Never Pretends to Be a Beautiful Muscle (Finishing Line Press) and Glowing Animals (Game Over Books), both forthcoming in 2023. Her work was nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net and appears in Breakwater Review, Carve Magazine, The Knicknackery, and New Letters, among others. She holds an MFA from Emerson College in Boston. Originally from eastern PA, she lives in Seattle with her husband, two children, and their dog.