Echoes of Gunfire: Laments
Two Southern poets confront the tragedy of school shootings. Johnson and Lawson’s raw, visceral words help us reflect on the Apalachee High School killings and the broader epidemic of gun violence in America’s schools.
Definitions of Insanity
By Yvonne M. Johnson
“Someone once described the joy and anxiety of parenthood as the equivalent of having your heart outside of your body all the time, walking around.”
—President Barack Obama, December 16, 2012, at a prayer vigil for the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
I
You will start kindergarten next year.
They will teach you to duck-and-cover
underneath your desk. You will hold
your breath, become invisible to bullets.
Your great grandmother hid like this once,
too. In times when atomic bombs could rain
down from clouds like acid. One day, it will not
be a drill. You will hear gunshots—lots of them
quick loud close. The door handle will twist
& you will scream.
II
The police, those godly men, those good men,
will not save you. Instead, 400 armed officers
will swarm just outside, form a human barrier.
They will wrap their arms around my stomach,
contort my wrists into handcuffs so I cannot run
to you. After, they will round us up into the county
firehouse where the mayor will be waiting. If you
are still here, I’m afraid it means the worst. All survivors
have been accounted for. There was nothing we could do—
& I will scream.
III
You will all be buried on the same weekend, broadcasted
live, one after the other. Parents will hug their little ones
closer, praying that it won’t be them next. But nothing will change.
At some point, we had decided that children’s bodies
were collateral damage, holy sacrifices for the right to bear
arms, that birthing babies was more important than keeping
them alive. So, in the end, your school will be demolished as
our freedom to own assault weapons is further enshrined
into law. One day, it will be another school, another mass grave
& we will scream.
Fine
By Lillah Lawson
A cold day in January 1979,
Grover Cleveland school: 2 killed,
injured 9.
Brenda Spencer said,
“I don’t like Mondays,”
a one-hit horror for Bob Geldof.
The kids are fine.
Cool spring day, April 1999,
two loners walked the halls
of Columbine.
The anchor said,
“Coverage continues,”
and it didn’t stop for thirty years.
The kids are fine.
Sandy Hook, and down the line—
Uvalde, Virginia Tech, Parkland—
shrine after empty shrine.
Shiny-toothed politico hell,
AR-15 pin on the lapel
to match their tweets and prayers.
The kids are fine.
A statistic: percentage 59,
the correlation between domestic violence
and mass shootings (here’s your sign).
Another one: 40 percent
of law enforcement
(oh, let’s discuss another time).
The kids are fine.
Try him as an adult this time.
A pound of flesh
for the vengeance whine.
Quick and easy, done and dusted,
hands off my gun cabinet.
I swear I keep it locked. Besides,
the kids are fine.
Wringing hands in place of a spine,
Prayers Up don’t really go up,
it all comes down in the end,
down to a gun, a day and a time.
The children dream of bullets,
and the rot has settled in, but
the kids are fine—
well, relatively fine.
Surely they’re fine.
About the author
Yvonne M. Johnson is the author of I Am Woman (Accents Publishing, 2021). Yvonne was born and raised in Kentucky and has been a member of the Affrilachian Poets since 2016. When she is not writing, she can be found riding horses, training her Labrador to find missing people, and playing the bagpipes.
Lillah Lawson is the author of novels Monarchs Under the Sassafras Tree (2019) and So Long, Bobby (2023), both nominated for Georgia Author of the Year, The Dead Rockstar Trilogy (2020-2024), and Tomorrow & Tomorrow with Lauren Emily Whalen (2023). Lillah was a 2020 recipient of a Micro-Fellowship from the Willson Center for Humanities & Arts at the University of Georgia and Flagpole Magazine for her short story “Shoofly” and has contributed works to several Stoker and Shirley Jackson Award-winning anthologies. Lillah enjoys writing across genres, specializing in historical fiction, Southern gothic, and horror, and also writes a monthly column for her local newspaper.
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Lillah Lawsonhttps://www.salvationsouth.com/author/lillah-lawson/
