Tag: gun lobby

A Sunday in October

By Ariel M. Goldenthal

 

The day after the Tree of Life synagogue shooting, I lied to my second-grade students: You are safe at Hebrew school. You will love learning the Aleph-Bet this year. Yes, you can open the windows and feel the early fall air ripple through the gaps between your outstretched fingers. You can have recess outside next week. Your teachers don’t need to be trained to apply a tourniquet. There’s nothing wrong with our classroom’s tall glass windows that look right into the front garden. I’m closing the blinds because it’s so sunny out. Let’s start with our usual morning activity. Today we’re learning about praying to God, which isn’t related at all to the reason your mom’s eyes looked red this morning and your dad whispered, “Maybe he should stay home today.” This happened in a synagogue very far away—not like where we live at all. No, this isn’t something that happens often.

I don’t tell them how the education director called all the teachers on Shabbat, a day when work is forbidden and rest is required, to tell us that despite, or perhaps because of, the horrific loss that day, religious school would still take place the next day; how the doors to synagogue, usually propped open on Sunday mornings to accommodate the flood of parents holding half-eaten bagels and their children’s hands, were locked; how we had to show our photo I.D.s to the officers in the main lobby who told us that we would collect our students and bring them to the classroom—parents wouldn’t be permitted inside; how Rabbis passed around handouts hastily adapted from the ones secular teachers received after the first school shooting this year, but didn’t need because they, like us, are used to the terror by now.

 

Ariel M. Goldenthal is an associate professor of English at George Mason University. Her work has appeared in The Citron Review, Flash Frontier, MoonPark Review, and others. Read more at www.arielmgoldenthal.com.

Photo credit: Sharon Pazner via a Creative Commons license.

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Ho’oponopono

By Kelsey D. Mahaffey

“In the book of the earth, it is written:
nothing can die.”  – Mary Oliver

 

The morning after it happens
again—weary with all
the thoughtless use of prayer,
I return to the Native path—

for solace,
for remembrance,
for release—

But grief is a heavy hold.

Last night, I lay awake
searching each shooting
star—the moon a wound
the sky refused to heal.

And today, as usual, the sun
woke from bended knees—
rising to break
the long hush of night.

So many have left
to hunt for arms—
answers or anger,
who can say? All around,

there are islands of dew
gathering the spring fields,
birds busy with work—
children still to feed.

Forgive us.

Somehow, a worn cradle of
moon still rocks—heaving waves
upon the shore. A ground dust dances
in the merciful arms of wind.

Dearest Mother,
if we ever choose to weep,
let it be tuned to the depths
of your whale’s forgotten song.

  

Kelsey D. Mahaffey rests her head in Nashville, TN, but keeps half her heart in New Orleans. She needs music and nature like breath and water, and walks the earth barefoot beside three humans and a bow-legged cat. Her work can be seen or is forthcoming in: Eunoia Review, Cumberland River Review, The Sunlight Press, and “The Keeping Room” at Minerva Rising Press.

Photo credit: Debbie Hall, photographer and author, and Writers Resist poetry editor.

A note from Writers Resist

Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.