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| Tamir Rice memorial. Source: NBC News. |
I don't want to be Joan of the Narrative Arc here,
wielding my flaming sword of story to drive you out
of my personal bleeding-heart-liberal paradise, BUT
here's a prompt: write a poem using the words
grant, bell, garner, brown, ford, and rice.
Employ a light touch, no sing-song or doggerel.
No sentimentality, please. No rants.
Attention to form but not formality.
Invoke all the senses. Let me see, hear, feel
what the twelve-year-old saw, heard, felt
waving that BB gun around the park.
The gold and orange leaves of Cleveland.
The smell of them rotting in rainwater.
The black-and-white pulling to the curb.
The crack. The pavement rushing up.
Jan Steckel's poetry book The Horizontal Poet (Zeitgeist Press, 2011) won a Lambda Literary Award. Her poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared in Scholastic Magazine, The Bellevue Literary Review, Yale Medicine, American Journal of Nursing, The Pedestal Magazine, and elsewhere.