Lessons
My sign says
”Thoughts and prayers
are not enough.”
It’s different from
my daughter’s.
She drew her own sign
wrote the words
colored it with sharpie.
Her hands are striped
by pen marks.
The park is filled with
protestors. More people
than we’ve seen since lockdown.
My daughter holds my hand
tightly.
She has seen the news
clips. She has seen me
cry.
Sun. No clouds.
Her fingers are sweaty.
I squeeze and
let go.
She holds up her sign.
When the chants start
she whispers.
Only I can hear her.
But time marches on.
The voices grow louder
and when she looks at me
again, she doesn’t
reach for my hand.
She doesn’t
whisper.
She doesn’t
look down.
She feels
the words.
She can teach them to
someone who needs
to know them
someone who isn’t here now
someone
who hasn’t learned them yet.
At Home
Lockdown casualties
worlds contained
in a cell
faceless names, faceless faces—
the politics of sound.
We are all trolls now
ranting our personal battles
on social media. When I use
shouty all caps to
MAKE OPINION INTO FACT
I don't know who listens
to one more pixelated voice
angry about something
unrelated to your something.
The red X ends the call
and everyone goes zooming off
to the next unimportant trend.
They deliberately ask no questions
leading to disagreeable answers
the optics of options
distorting endlessly.
And I look out:
out of the blank window
out at the bare streets.
When we cry for our dead
who will mourn
what we thought of them?
Where we struck each other in battle,
that is how reality will end.
About Alison McBane: I am an award-winning author with over 100 published shorts, including work in Litro, The Mark Literary Review, and Quail Bell Magazine. Last year, my poem “Assimilation,” published in the 2019 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year finalist Aftermath: Explorations of Loss & Grief, was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. My debut fantasy novel The Rose Queen received the Gold Award for the YA fantasy category of the 2019 Literary Classics International Book Awards. When not writing, I am lead editor for the small press publisher Fairfield Scribes, and associate editor for the literary magazine Scribes*MICRO*Fiction.
See more of Alison’s work on her website, and connect with her on Twitter.