New Orleans Mother's Day Shooting I saw this photo of the shooter. I saw another image near him and asked myself, "Is that a small child running?"
Original photo from shooting at Mothers' Day Second Line on May 12, 2013, New Orleans. Read story here and here.
Some of this poem may be classified as found poetry.
New Orleans Mother's Day, May 12, 2013
Sacred celebration,
The second line — we
Step, spring, taste relief.
Then firecrackers pop. Bullets.
We scatter, trip. We bleed.
At the sullied scene: "Ain't nobody out here at fault.
But everybody is," Mayor Landrieu says, "responsible.
Evidently,
"There is no day anymore that is
Sacred. No
Day is safe, not
Mother's Day, not
Martin Luther King's holiday on the day
When the President of the United States was sworn in
For the second time when
On Martin Luther King Boulevard,
We had a shooting," he says. We pause.
Is that a small child running?
In surveillance shots?
Like an omen.
Is that picture PhotoShopped?
The shooter aims the gun.
A baby flees
The carnage of what's to come.
The same, the same
Running
Like a slave.
Like an ill wind
Huffed in impotence,
Our failure to shield
Innocence,
A child is running
Alone.
Who is that little one?
Will he, too, one day wield a gun?
