Amanda Hartzell

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.