by Fred Demien
A study that evaluated medical records from 156 [St. Louis] child victims of firearms found that most did not know who shot them or why. —St. Louis Public Radio, May 9, 2023. Graphic by Susannah Lohr.
Americans under the age of eighteen are eight times more likely to be killed in St. Louis than in the rest of the country...[As of] March, eight St. Louis children have already been killed in 2021. —St. Louis Riverfront Times, March 10, 2021
· In 2021, twenty-three children were killed in gunfire in the St. Louis metropolitan area.
· In 2022, twenty-six children were killed in gunfire in the St. Louis metropolitan area.
· As of 13 June 2023, ten children have been killed in gunfire in the St. Louis metropolitan area.
There is no known original name, only what it became.
The city that drips with the Shadow’s pitch.
It wasn’t planned—
the architects didn’t plot it in their original drawings;
the sewer district had no recourse for its removal;
the contractor did not budget it in her original bid.
Only the asphalt worker knew, driving his roller,
slow in the stick and heat of summer. But no one listened
when he said he saw it swallow a child whole.
Except that child’s mother, and another, another,
as child after child disappeared.
News reached the mayor too late
after his election to campaign, so he ignored it.
But one day the Shadow towered at the city’s gateway
and opened like a mouth, with thousands of cries
of young girls and boys screaming out.
The mayor declared it a threat, but
the money was already allotted, he said.
They never fully calculated the damage, but a generation
of future voters—gone. Everyone else evacuated.
Even mothers left, their sons and daughters all
drawn down the unending gullet of the Shadow.
Still the mayor stays in the swallowed city,
sitting at his darkened desk, writing
—in what he thinks is ink—
the songs he hears carried in children’s voices
seeping from the walls.
He sends what he can to their mothers.
The city that drips with the Shadow’s pitch.
It wasn’t planned—
the architects didn’t plot it in their original drawings;
the sewer district had no recourse for its removal;
the contractor did not budget it in her original bid.
Only the asphalt worker knew, driving his roller,
slow in the stick and heat of summer. But no one listened
when he said he saw it swallow a child whole.
Except that child’s mother, and another, another,
as child after child disappeared.
News reached the mayor too late
after his election to campaign, so he ignored it.
But one day the Shadow towered at the city’s gateway
and opened like a mouth, with thousands of cries
of young girls and boys screaming out.
The mayor declared it a threat, but
the money was already allotted, he said.
They never fully calculated the damage, but a generation
of future voters—gone. Everyone else evacuated.
Even mothers left, their sons and daughters all
drawn down the unending gullet of the Shadow.
Still the mayor stays in the swallowed city,
sitting at his darkened desk, writing
—in what he thinks is ink—
the songs he hears carried in children’s voices
seeping from the walls.
He sends what he can to their mothers.
Fred Demien is a queer, itinerant minister. In 2016, her work was longlisted for the Lascaux Prize in Poetry. Her writing will be published by The Forge Literary Magazine in July of 2023. An admirer of trees, bees, and human beings, she is currently writing and building community in the greater St. Louis area.
