From NPR News: How To Be The Good Guy With A Gun At School

First, resist the urge to just point it at students. You are a teacher. Aiming at students is a mistake. They’ll expect you to fire and be disappointed if you don’t. To have any authority, you'll have to take one out. Preferably without aiming. Choosing targets is too difficult. The obvious choice is that big pain in your ass of a kid. But he’s kind of funny. Shoot him and the classroom will be dull. That’s no good. What about the girl who won’t put down her phone? Tempting. But she tests well. If you take her out of the equation (so to speak) the whole school suffers. Really you shouldn’t aim. Just let loose. Fire a few times if that helps. Order must be maintained. Respect too. Fire away. In this manner, you can be a good guy with a gun at school. And if anyone argues the point, you know what to do.

(Okay, here's the obligatory note saying that this poem is ironic. It's mocking Wayne LaPierre's suggestions that teachers should be armed. Given all the pressures on teachers, the volatility of students, and the stupidity of Wayne's idea, I'm not a fan of guns in any classroom.)

From NPR News: Some People Really Can Taste the Rainbow

In fact, most of us can. It’s sherbert flavored, of course. But not rainbow sherbert. It’s some kind of berry. We don’t know which one. Tasting it is easy. Finding it is tough. You find rainbows out there but can’t track them down. Some people—scientists and meteorologists mostly but plumbers and social workers too—claim that one can’t find the end of a rainbow. The point where it touches down. And they’re right. One can’t. But if you travel in pairs and threes and fours, most anything can be tracked down. I’ve been on expeditions to the dividing moment between day and night and the point at which fog ends. Finding the ends of rainbows is easy. And when we do, we eat up its berry goodness as though it will melt away. Because it does. Leaving just the hint of some berry on our tongues. We don’t know which one.

The Trees Overhanging the Bedroom

My brother assures me that the trees overhanging the bedroom are just fine. But what does he know? He’s an architect. We need an arborist. My wife and me. Because at night I hear things. Wind. Falling leaves. Branches breaking over our bed. At night I fear that the trees will crash down on us. A collection of maples. Mistakes that grew for decades. Chances. Now overhanging the house. Casting shadows on our bedroom. My brother says, they’re hardwoods. Strong. They will last forever. Almost. But he lives by himself. No wife beside him in the night. No trees over his bedroom. The interweaving of our trees is complicated. And the way they hang suspended over us is more than I can understand. The dark is deep and the wind is strong. I lie awake some nights wondering what will happen. I hear branches whisper, til death do us part. The wind roars. My brother knows nothing.

Cliffs Notes

At the bookstore I send my children on their way. Stay together, I tell them. As if together they can face the dangers of this world and their futures. I linger near the front. Holding a book about a woman who has fallen apart. Her father died. Her family scattered. She married. Then divorced. She broke down. I begin reading, trying not to flip to the ending. To the solution. Trying not to cheat. The urge is so strong. The door behind me opens. A woman with three children. Stay together, she tells them. They scatter. She watches for a moment then looks at a book on the table we share. Her hair is dyed blonde. Bobbed. Her face is tan in March. She is lip-gloss moist. Her body is tall and thin. She has sensual fingers. I swear it. She puts down a book and walks away toward new fiction. I write her story in my head as if it were mine to tell. I’ve forgotten the book I hold in my hands. My children run toward me, books in their hands. Can we buy them? Can we? We walk to the register. I pay for three books. At home, I hold the book in my hands and wonder why I bought it. The ending seems so obvious now.

The Sacred Bookstore

In the sacred bookstore we kneel in the aisles to turn the pages of our scripture. Our voices drop to a hush. Our eyes look downward. We all turn off our phones. My daughters float in baptismal gowns reading about fairies and girls who tame wolves. My wife searches for words about her pain, lips moving, eyes nearly closed. My mother reads to my father in a whisper that carries. Priests and nuns, rabbis and imams, saints and sinners gather in the sacred bookstore. They pass notes and collection baskets. Sip coffee and eat wafer thin biscuits. Outside, cars roar through the streets. The market is down. Politicians stand on street corners shouting their way to salvation. The sky itself falls. In the sacred bookstore clerks murmur an incantation. The customers respond. We all say amen. I look up to the vaulted ceiling. Frescoed on the stone, God hands Adam an apple. Eve sits nearby, reading a book, paying them no mind. I kiss the binding of my book. Close my eyes. And pray the words written inside the pages.  

Daylight Savings

In the dark morning after the time change you wonder about all the lies you’ve been told. Work hard and you’ll succeed. True love lasts. Father knows best. There is a God. You have tried hard to believe in these things. But the light is gone from the morning and the clocks are all wrong. You’re awake but not hungry. You just know you should be somewhere else. You aren’t sure where. You’re no longer sure who you were meant to be. You feel alone and out of time. So you stand very still. In the kitchen. Facing the window over the sink. Arms stretched out away from your body. Toes pointed. That’s when you feel it. The Earth. Your home. It spins on its axis. You feel the shape of that sphere below you. There’s the sun at the center of things. The galaxy of its sister stars. The universe that is everything. And there you are. When you open your eyes, the morning sun has dawned. Your heart beats a steady rhythm in perfect standard time.  

The Cat Told Me She Was Dead

The cat told me she was dead. My mother. I looked into the cat's eyes. How would you know? I asked. And how would you tell me. The cat said again, She is gone. I waited, but cats don’t elaborate. The cat bit at its claws. It licked its paw clean. The cat shook its head. It blinked, then stared at me. I tried to stare back. But you know how cats are. They’ve had more practice. I didn’t stand a chance. Looking down, I saw that the floor needed sweeping. So much hair. I couldn’t remember when I had last mopped. And the dishes, the drainboard, the ketchup spilled inside the fridge. I wondered what my mother would have thought of these things. How had she gone so wrong with me. I felt her disappointment. And I felt the phone ringing in my pocket. The cat walked out of the room. It found a place in the sun and lay down. I looked at the phone and saw that it was my mother calling. From the other room, I heard the cat say, I wouldn’t answer that. Some things you trust your cat about.