THE THIRTEENTH STATION — CHARLESTON 2015

by Janice Lynch Schuster

Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America

If only the women had carried
Guns in their Bibles and prayed
With rage, not love

If only the children had carried
Guns in their backpacks
Their teachers might
Have been spared

If only the boy playing
In the yard had something
Real to fire

If only the suffocating
Man had had gunpowder,,
Not tobacco

If only we armed us all
Who worship at the glamorous
Fortresses of our fears

Brought to us
By the NRA and Congress afraid
Itself to say no

If only we let the bloodbath
Baptize us daily in horror
While our blue hearts
Beat on and we tweet

Hashtags of despair
As if to absolve ourselves
Of the killings we did not stop
And the ballots  we failed
To cast


Janice Lynch Schuster is the author of a collection, Saturday at the Gym, and has been published in various print and online venues, including Poet Lore, Your Daily Poem, and The Broadkill Review. She writes about health care and public policy, lives in Annapolis, MD, and works in Washington, DC.

MY DAUGHTERS MARCH

by Janice Lynch Schuster

Demonstrators block the intersection of Forest Drive and Hilltop during a police violence protest in Annapolis, MD on Friday afternoon. (By Matthew Cole, (Annapolis) Capital Gazette /December 12, 2014) 

Lined up with
signs and silent
rage
protestors stymie
rush hour drivers,
so eager to be home
and done
with the day.

For the marchers,
some things are never
done.
Even when they breathe
their nostrils
burn
with awareness
that others cannot.

some mother’s child
will be next
it is only a matter
of time before
another child goes down
on a playground
or in a school
or home
or sleeping
or whatever it is
the living
take for granted

What are my girls
to the irritated drivers
who bitch
to Facebook
and text their nannies?
Thugs, they shout
at my daughters,
safe behind
their horns.

Whatever they knew
of care
is gone on the wind.
The women--
solemn
behind their signs--
pray anyway


Janice Lynch Schuster is the author of a collection, Saturday at the Gym, and has been published in various print and online venues, including Poet Lore, Your Daily Poem, and The Broadkill Review. She writes about health care and public policy, lives in Annapolis, MD, and works in Washington, DC.

WHAT THE POOR DO

by Janice Lynch Schuster

Photo source: lorena pajares

for Ai-jen Poo and Maria Shriver

When the poor woman leans in

it is to hold the steering wheel tight

and grip hard, sliding into the turn

to avoid a skid on wet pavement

and tires worn to a sheen.

She sits closer to a small flame

on a gas stove, and rubs her hands

with her children’s, because electricity

is money burning, and she doesn’t have it.

She leans in with someone else’s child

on her hip, over a sink,

scrubbing hard at the dirt

others leave behind, polishing

her body to exhaustion.

When the poor woman leans in

to the cashier at the food store

it is to whisper about bringing the five

dollars short tomorrow,

and has Oreos because apples and oranges

are something more entirely.


Janice Lynch Schuster is the author of a collection, Saturday at the Gym, and has been published in various print and online venues, including Poet Lore, Your Daily Poem, and The Broadkill Review. She writes about health care and public policy, lives in Annapolis, MD, and works in Washington, DC.

SHOOT THE BASTARDS DOWN

by Janice Lynch Schuster

They will know us by our guns
The fierce industry of our arms
As we drag our heavy bodies
Loaded and overwrought
Into coffee shops where we never sit
With our backs to the door

We will think they love us
When really, it is fear that keeps them
Frozen at our sides, unable to turn
In any direction.  We can take them out
And never feel a thing.

We will carve our names and terrors
Into wood and steel, the way we once
Left our initials in trees and school desks

We will want someone to know
That we were here, and by damn
When the levee breaks
We will shoot that water down.


Janice Lynch Schuster is the author of a collection, Saturday at the Gym, and has been published in various print and online venues, including Poet Lore, Your Daily Poem, and The Broadkill Review. She writes about health care and public policy, lives in Annapolis, MD, and works in Washington, DC.