Donal Mahoney- A Poem

Guns and Cell Phones

In St. Louis young blacks

carry guns like cell phones 

and use them often

to shoot each other, 

as we read in the daily paper 

and see on local television.

Black adults now put signs

in parks and yards in

neighborhoods around the city

with this message for their young: 

“We must stop killing each other.”

They want to stop the suicide. 

The poet Gwendolyn Brooks 

once wrote that peace 

won’t come to anyone until 

everyone is “tea-colored.” 

By 3015 the world may know

if Gwendolyn was right.

Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri.