After Another School Shooting, I Go to Work
Every day, millions of teachers and students face the possibility of violence. This Mississippi teacher is one of them.
More specifically, I go to a school. With doors
and windows and hallways filled with teenagers
and their posturing, their effort at looking
effortless. Surely they know about yesterday’s
sunset, how it warmed the errant spring shower.
Surely they know they are alive right now.
I focus on the corridors crowded with bodies
moving to third period, the shrieking
laughter. I think about that sunset and its bleeding
colors painting the puddles dark and warm.
About the author
James Dickson teaches English and Creative Writing at Germantown High School, just outside of Jackson, Mississippi. He is an MFA graduate from the Bennington Writing Seminars and the recipient of Mississippi Arts Commission fellowships. His poems, book reviews, and essays appear inThe Louisiana Review, Spillway, Slant, McSweeney’s, and his debut collection,Some Sweet Vandal, was published by Kelsay Books. He lives in Jackson with his wife, their son, and a small menagerie.
- James Dicksonhttps://www.salvationsouth.com/author/james-dickson/
Love this–how the sunset is hopeful and beautiful but at the same time stands in for blood–that mix is so sad. The wish that students see and value the sunset despite that ever-present spectre of violence.