by Marsha Owens
if i were a poet of great repute
i’d fashion a poem of hope,
ask it to travel with me
alongside Breanna,
next to George Floyd,
so many others since...
young victims at school
ad infinitum,
and i would ask the poem
to be gentle with us
as we climbed words,
reached for understanding
dangling like a noose
instead i feel the poem resist
i watch it walk into hell
because no words exist
to save lives trapped
in gunfire.
Marsha Owens is a retired teacher who lives and writes in Richmond, VA. Her essays and poetry have appeared in both print and online publications including The New Verse News, The Sun, Huffington Post, Wild Word Anthology, Dead Mule, and Streetlight Anthology. She is co-editor of the poetry anthology Lingering in the Margins, and her chapbook She Watered Her Flowers in the Morning has been recently published at Finishing Line Press.