by Jeremy Nathan Marks
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| A row of flowers with tags of the victims’ names are tied to a fence at the site of a shooting at King Soopers grocery store in Boulder, Colo., on March 24. (Alyson McClaran/Reuters via The Washington Post) "Over the past three weeks, 22 people have died in three major mass shootings in the United States, according to a Washington Post database that tracks those events." —The Washington Post, April 4, 2021 |
Again,
spring comes around
and people talk of hope
The coming of columbines
daffodils and hyacinths
the way the greening willows
weep
Squirrels,
working in the dark
moved many bulbs
so no one knows where
they will sprout this year
But who is speaking
about spring as the season
of mass shootings
The ammo crop that is ever ripe
When young men emerge
from the long, dim winter
and find themselves
deathly pale
in the too brilliant sun
Who is watching out for them?
Jeremy Nathan Marks lives in Canada. Recent work appears in Dissident Voice, Jewish Literary Journal, Bewildering Stories, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Chiron Review.