too much to bear

In the weeks since the Buffalo shooting at the Tops Friendly supermarket on May 14, 2022, there have been more shooting than I can bear. Two sonnets for Buffalo and Uvalde follow

Buffalo

Tops Friendly market, Buffalo

A grocery store
A place to meet
A place to see and be seen
A place to assemble the ingredients of life’s pleasures

Ten lives
Ten elders
Ten pillars of their families, communities
Mourn for their loss

Buffalo, you joined the litany of hate crime scenes
Charleston, 2015, Mother Emmanuel church
Pittsburgh, 2018, Tree of Life synagogue
El Paso, 2019, Walmart

How do we unwind the Gordian knot
of White men’s rage?

Uvalde

nine to eleven
the wonder years
children bound to parents
in trust

shoots in the garden
reaching towards
yet unrealized selves
at the end of 4th grade

ready to move
ready for more
just shy of pimples and crushes
a sliver of time too precious to waste

cut short by a reaper’s scythe
he grew from the same soil