When one gets steam-rolled, as many of us were the Tuesday before last, one gets back up, dusts oneself off, hugs family and community, and gets back to work.

 

Why? Because there is so much to do. In the poem that follows, Reginald Dwayne Betts reminds us of things that need to be fixed and the challenges we will continue to encounter.

 

When I Think Of Tamir Rice While Driving

 

Reginald Dwayne Betts

 

in the back seat my sons laugh & tussle,

far from Tamir’s age, adorned with his

complexion & cadence & already forewarned

 

about toy pistols, though my rhetoric

ain’t about fear, but about dislike—about

how guns have haunted me since I first gripped

 

a pistol; I think of Tamir, twice-blink

& confront my weeping’s inadequacy, how

some loss invents the geometry that baffles.

 

The Second Amendment—cold, cruel,

a constitutional violence, a ruthless

thing worrying me still; should be it predicts

 

the heft in my hand, armed sag, burdened by

what I bear: My bare arms collaged

with wings as if hope alone can bring

 

back a buried child. A child, a toy gun,

a blue shield’s rapid rapid rabid shit. This

is how misery sounds: my boys

 

playing in the backseat juxtaposed against

a twelve-year old’s murder playing

in my head. My tongue cleaves to the roof

.  .  .