Could You Lead With
By George Perreault
This poem was recently published in The American Journal of Poetry.
George Pererault, a previous contributor to Double Down and the American Poetry Journal, has worked as a visiting writer throughout the American West. His most recent book, Bodark County, is a collection of poems in the voices of various characters living on the Llano Estacado.
some folks who got shot today,
make it a whole bunch, a good score,
and sure some young ones are best,
give us headlines and ticker scroll,
the body count rising like a pledge drive,
maybe flashing lights and mouths, all that
yappery and professional rendering
with a slice of breaking news
and some serious background on ballistics
cuz without the sparkles sooner or later
we’d have to face up to the dead,
the floors blood-soaked towels exhausted docs
hollow-eyed from weeping girl after girl how
they couldn’t stop the bleeding and they’re
so tired can’t even say exsanguination,
have to leave that for some spokesperson
doing another who where why so
don’t stick us with dead kids and mine, mine
screaming and screaming,
that’s just another day in America,
teddy bears and candles, remnants for the families,
someone’s purse, someone’s shoes,
asking what piece of your child
got lost in the rat-a-tat,
so give us the action, not the aftermath, we need addition
maybe multiplication, just none of those subtractions
not the minus and never that long division
with its whole numbers and then the remainders,
the broken parts which are always left over –
give us the fresh dead,
don’t leave us in the shatters.