The pin oak leaves turned maroon.
Then dried brown. Then in late
autumn, they fell. All winter
I waited for their green return.
Into early spring.
They are green now
outside the window on the classroom’s
south wall. Greener for the day’s clear
blue scrim of sky. Through the east wall’s
window, open to mid-spring heat, I can
hear the younger children screeching
on the playing field up the hill.
Yesterday /
today / tomorrow / in some America / a gun
in a child’s hand has killed / is killing /
will kill / other children.
Yesterday,
the killed children were the age
of my youngest child. Today,
they are the age of my oldest.
How old will the children be
tomorrow?
I imagine their eyes /
late autumn / winter /early spring
dilated with fear. Or, narrow
with no capacity to understand.
The killer’s mind a hailstorm
of anger and confusion.
I cannot
imagine it.
I am sitting in a classroom.
The pin oak outside the window
has come back to green. The gun
in the child’s hand killed teachers too.
This a teacher’s job / yesterday / today /
tomorrow/ in some America: to die
wrapped in our children. Late autumn /
winter /early spring /teachers dead,
but mainly children.
The killer /
the gun/
—in the classroom,
below windows
hung with their art,
under their desks,
children /

Contributor Notes

Iain Haley Pollock is the author of two poetry collections, Spit Back a Boy, winner of the 2010 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, and Ghost, Like a Place, which was nominated for an NAACP Image Award. Individual poems have appeared in African American Review, American Poetry Review, The Baffler, and The New York Times Magazine, as well as in a number of anthologies. Pollock directs the MFA Program at Manhattanville College and lives in the Hudson Valley.