by Christine Jackson
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Under my tarp shivering, boots soaked, mud. Jesus an attack in this rain? We were ready, sure. My back muscles still zinged from days of digging burying metal cases under the trees, tamping soggy ground. Like for small graves. High school kids hacked into the Jay Six list. We were next. Tonight. My phone flashes a text from Irene in the vols tent by the road: 3 F150 pickups. A thrum of thunder rolls over the wintry field behind the library and my taut nerves. Trucks rumble into the parking lot. Profane confusion among bobbing flashlights. My binoculars pick up a dozen long-beards in ragtag camo and epaulets, oilskin duster coats. One horned helmet. Flagpoles with bayonet tips. I tap a quick text to our people.
Sprays of shattered glass and a percussive thud from a flash bang mean they are inside. Tipped shelves clatter. Rows of racks collapse, crash. Guttural whoops over their empty victory. The library’s massive alarm leaps to life, out-whooping them, pulsing louder in the rain. They scramble, cursing along the slick walkway. I huddle at the edge of the woods, my rifle close to defend sacred ground, the buried texts. We knew the Project’s targeted titles, so many, Shakespeare, Orwell, Bradbury, Margaret Atwood, Stephen King. We saved what we could, but for how long?
The F150s roar away. More would follow.
We had truth. Was it enough?
Icy rain continues to fall, steady, insistent,
pelting the tarp overhead like birdshot.
Christine Jackson is retired from her day job, three decades of teaching literature and creative writing at a South Florida university. She continues to clock in on a life-long night shift writing poetry. Her work has appeared in an array of online journals, including The Ekphrastic Review, Verse-Virtual, and South Florida Poetry Journal.
