Local News from Someplace Else. Marjorie Maddox

stormed past, for just a second,

      turned those puppy eyes

      on something else. Such loyalty,

      you’d hate to put him down. What does it matter—

      gun propped against the wall,

      you, a veteran? I’ve heard it before,

      typed up the medical reports

      seconds before that other gunshot,

      the one aimed for the head.

      Safe

      My baby and I stay home

      from the funeral for the murdered child,

      unrecognizably battered and stabbed

      in last week’s news photos.

      The police arrive early

      at the church, the estranged wife

      and husband, separated by rows of pews,

      glare at photographers, suspect

      each other. They have both

      aimed guns. My husband lights

      church candles around the girl’s enlarged

      classroom photo, prays

      for us. What is safe lurks

      nowhere near, doubt encrypting

      fear, the way we cross

      ourselves in our cloistered home.

      We stare nightly at neighbors

      walking too close to the nursery window,

      too close to the woods

      where the girl was found,

      her arms criss-crossed just so

      as if by a parent who can

      no longer sleep.

      Fifth-grader Imagined Taking Over School

      –Newspaper Headline; Wellsboro, PA

      All the safe, small towns—

      gas streetlights silly in retrospect—

      proclaim surprise. What else

      when their children’s open

      veins stain the school tiles?

      Here the cornstalks stay calm;

      the cost-of-living low?

      The cobblestone streets empty out

      from all but spectators shooting cameras,

      murder and media sole companions

      in this former tourist-attraction for tranquility.

      Eventually, summer skateboarders

      will again hunt back roads,

      barefoot teens will dive

      into abandoned swimming holes,

      grade-schoolers at bat will boast

      that they were there, that day,

      in the hallway, the cafeteria,

      the next classroom over.

      On the hottest day

      when a small town’s boredom sizzles

      into the limbs of its children,

      they will wonder what it was like to aim,

      to hit the target fast and accurately,

      to explode in the unfamiliar dazzle

      of forbidden city lights.

      The Good Mother Hides From Photographers

      All week they’ve stolen her daughter’s face,

      rolled it up, delivered it in late editions

      to each waiting neighbor, all of whom

      are quoted passionately as saying,

      “She comes from a good family.

      We don’t understand.”

      Neither does she, hiding behind

      her just-washed curtains,

      the family portraits eyeing her disgrace.

      Reporters ring the bell,

      wait for her good manners

      to reclaim her.

      It is time for school,

      her daughter appropriately housed

      behind evenly spaced bars,

      her unsure lips as complex as fingerprints.

      Even this is a photographic exhibit

      with the wrong captions.

      Behind her 8 x 10 door,

      the good mother develops

      polite excuses, snaps