My kid won’t go to school
anymore.
Morning finds her buried
in her sleep,
her father at her door
pleading.
We were violent at first,
me throwing off her covers, she
kicking.
She bit me once.
Now we have a pattern,
I beg
a short time through
her hollow door.
She clings to silence
til I’m gone.
She knows she’s wrong,
hates herself.
Retreating, I know
she’s right.
We scroll the same scenes
all day.
Presidents laughing
onstage
over bombs for Israel.
Yesterday
in Gaza, a food line
was shot to pieces.
Moms and kids.
And here?
A students crack,
C students
are doomed.
Last spring a classmate
jumped off,
a senior OD’d
this fall.
My brother’s kids were
locked down
last year while a classmate
shot
his homeroom.
The usual.
My daughter says she’s bored
by nature.
Waterfalls, canyons,
oceans.
Last year Mount Rainier,
she wants to
go back to the car
and sleep.
No longer sublime,
the world
holds no secrets.
Not even the laws that
govern us.
Only the dumb persistence
of atoms.
We understand they’re
in the Tube,
these kids. The Blitz above.
We adults
are afraid, our talk
dull bluster
in the dark. The kids
have seen this.
Life is a thing that wants
them dead.
Later I will bring
her lunch.
James Caton
James Caton is an emerging author whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in Impossible Task, Arboreal, La Piccioletta Barca, and The MacGuffin. He is completing a book of poems, Nakba and Other Poems. He lives in Ann Arbor.
