American Pastime
I will be out of this
country for just two weeks.
14 days.
336 hours.
During that time
a car will be driven into
a day care center.
A 4 year old girl will
die.
14 people were be
injured.
In Texas, there will be
another shooting in Ft. Hood.
4 people will die.
16 will be hurt.
In Pittsburgh 24 people
will be stabbed inside a school.
A place for learning.
All of this will be
reported to me,
on the other side of the
ocean
listening to people talk
about
my fellow citizens
and their actions
like talking about a
tribe they don’t understand.
When I come back
the only music store left
in NYC,
a cultural institution
for 75 years will be shuttered.
I will hear about an art
supply store closing
as well as yet another
bookstore.
No music.
No paint.
No books.
I will wonder if in its
place
gun stores will spring
up.
Why not? That is our new
national pastime.
We have no artists,
only killers.
I will watch this country
like a woman watches a
deadly car crash
frozen
fearful
transfixed
but
hopefully
for my own safety
from behind
bullet-proof glass.
Emma Sings in Church
We take our seats in the
church,
here for the noon day
free concert
that they’ve been
offering for 75 years.
It makes me wish the
churches back home did this sort
of thing and then I
remember that if they did
I wouldn’t be free at noon
on a Tuesday anyway.
My weekdays belong to
someone else.
I fidget, squirming in my
seat
like a child,
behind me the pipes of
the organ shine.
When the musicians come
in I start.
They are all so young,
long hair and nervous
smiles.
You can see the energy
wafting off of them.
I look around the packed
church,
my husband and I are the
youngest people here
but we are not young,
not like these girls
who tuck their violins
under their chin
fingers quivering with so
much potential.
When the soloist comes
out,
her voice otherworldly
exactly the way Handel
would have wanted
I feel something shift in
me,
and for a moment I wonder
if I will make it home
or if my plane will fall
out of the sky.
I look at the program.
Her name is Emma,
this small girl full of
so much sound
that I can feel myself
breathe it in.
It tastes like buttermint
and time.
It tastes like all that
life
still ahead of her
begging to be filled.
For a moment I remember
what that felt like
and then I close my eyes
and beg it to stop.
Ally Malinenko is the author of the poetry collection The Wanting Bone (Six Gallery Press), the children's book Lizzy Speare and the Cursed Tomb (Antenna Books) and This Is Sarah (Bookfish Books). She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, the poet and novelist John Grochalski.
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