by John Minczeski
On the news feed this morning,
on my phone’s small screen, two
children shot dead at morning Mass
before school. Others wounded
before the shooter turned the gun
on himself. Pardon me, readers,
this is not a poem,
I must follow Adorno’s
dictum. And yet, how refuse
the poem, however prosaic
and filled with reportage. How,
gentle reader, can I look at the tree
in my front window, the one
thinking of turning yellow,
that just yesterday made me think
life and beauty fill the same page.
This is not a poem, it is an outrage.
Twenty minutes from here,
maybe twenty five from my toast
and eggs sunny side up, the dead
and wounded children. Like ones
I taught in my career, whose eyes
brightened with poems.
A few clouds punctuate the sky.
My younger brother has arrived
in Wyoming to drive my reclusive
older brother to California.
This is not a poem, it is a window
to my older brother so taken
with the beauty of the Tetons
he tried killing himself. At the end
of King Kong, a guy says it was
beauty that killed the beast.
Therefore two brothers are in a car
driving west to a new normal,
and children with head wounds
are being treated at Hennepin General.
This is not a poem, this is a treatise
on teaching theodicy to six year olds.
This is me looking out the window
watching wind flip the leaves.
The green, the verde, que te quiero
verde of Lorca. Green leaves,
green children, que te quiero.
John Minczeski is the author of five collections as well as several chapbooks. His poems have appeared previously in NVN as well as The New Yorker, The Harvard Review, and elsewhere. Minczeski worked as a poet in the schools for many years, and has taught at various colleges and universities around the Twin Cities. He served as president of the board for The Loft Literary Center when it was on the second floor of a bookshop in the Dinkytown area of Minneapolis.