After Another School Shooting, I Walk To The Mailbox
Dusk descends like ginkgo leaves
kissing a pond. Slow breeze
foreshadows rain. Nineteen
children dead, two teachers.
Under the magnolia, two fireflies.
The first I’ve seen this season.
Harbingers of summer, of rest.
Empty mailbox. I walk back, carrying
so much.
*
James Dickson teaches English and Creative Writing at Germantown High School, just outside of Jackson, MS. An MFA graduate from the Bennington Writing Seminars, he is the recipient of Mississippi Arts Commission fellowships, was named High School Literary Magazine Advisor of the Year by the Mississippi Scholastic Press Association, and was invited to speak at the National Educators Association 50th anniversary celebration “The Promise of Public Education.” His poems, book reviews, and essays appear in The Common, Ruminate, The Louisiana Review, Spillway, Slant, Poetry Quarterly, McSweeney’s, and other publications, and his debut collection, Some Sweet Vandal, was published by Kelsay Books. He lives in Jackson, MS, with his wife, their son, and a small menagerie of animals.
