When one gets steam-rolled, as many of us were the Tuesday before last, one gets back up, dusts oneself off, hugs family and community, and gets back to work.
Why? Because there is so much to do. In the poem that follows, Reginald Dwayne Betts reminds us of things that need to be fixed and the challenges we will continue to encounter.
When I Think Of Tamir Rice While Driving
Reginald Dwayne Betts
in the back seat my sons laugh & tussle,
far from Tamir’s age, adorned with his
complexion & cadence & already forewarned
about toy pistols, though my rhetoric
ain’t about fear, but about dislike—about
how guns have haunted me since I first gripped
a pistol; I think of Tamir, twice-blink
& confront my weeping’s inadequacy, how
some loss invents the geometry that baffles.
The Second Amendment—cold, cruel,
a constitutional violence, a ruthless
thing worrying me still; should be it predicts
the heft in my hand, armed sag, burdened by
what I bear: My bare arms collaged
with wings as if hope alone can bring
back a buried child. A child, a toy gun,
a blue shield’s rapid rapid rabid shit. This
is how misery sounds: my boys
playing in the backseat juxtaposed against
a twelve-year old’s murder playing
in my head. My tongue cleaves to the roof
. . .
