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Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America |
If only the women had carried
Guns in their Bibles and prayed
With rage, not love
If only the children had carried
Guns in their backpacks
Their teachers might
Have been spared
If only the boy playing
In the yard had something
Real to fire
If only the suffocating
Man had had gunpowder,,
Not tobacco
If only we armed us all
Who worship at the glamorous
Fortresses of our fears
Brought to us
By the NRA and Congress afraid
Itself to say no
If only we let the bloodbath
Baptize us daily in horror
While our blue hearts
Beat on and we tweet
Hashtags of despair
As if to absolve ourselves
Of the killings we did not stop
And the ballots we failed
To cast
Janice Lynch Schuster is the author of a collection, Saturday at the Gym, and has been published in various print and online venues, including Poet Lore, Your Daily Poem, and The Broadkill Review. She writes about health care and public policy, lives in Annapolis, MD, and works in Washington, DC.