Poetry Is the Gnomic Utterance from Which the Soul Springs, Fluttering

At the podium measured and grave as a metronome the (white, male) poet with bald- gleaming head broods in gnom- ic syllables on the death of 12-year-old (black, male) Tamir Rice shot in a park by a Cleveland police officer claiming to believe the boy’s plastic pistol was a “real gun” like his own eager to discharge and slay while twelve feet away at the edge of the bright-lit stage the (white, female) interpreter signing for the deaf is stricken with emotion — horror, pity, disbelief — outrage, sorrow — young-woman face contorted and eyes spilling tears like Tamir Rice’s mother perhaps, or the sister made to witness the child’s bleeding out in the Cleveland park. We stare as the interpreter’s fingers pluck the poet’s words out of the air like bullets, break open stanzas tight as conches with the deft ferocity of a cormo- rant and render gnome-speech raw as hurt, as harm, as human terror wet-eyed and mouth-grimaced in horror’s perfect O.