CLAY PIGEONS

                    by Keegan Lester 


That Jesus was hanging
                        crooked against the wall of my social studies class
on his cross, & that it was April

                                    & morning & that my teacher who then
            still alive,

still speaking with an accent

which may have been from Arkansas or Vermont
                                    & held the magic of perhaps being from anywhere

but here, & the part I most remember
            is the nicotine yellow

                                    of her teeth rotting before our eyes.
I remember that year we wrote reports on a state
                                   
            & I chose Washington
                        because the one thing I knew then
about Washington was Washington
                                     
            had wild orcas swimming up & down its coast.  Do you like

apples or something children teased. 
            No, I like orcas, I would say. I remember

a woman from the office whispering
                        into the ear of my teacher. I remember

            my teacher not yet crying,
walking over to the television the way paramedics are trained to walk
                        which is in slow motion. Steady                       

movements  as if we were the small precious animal

            that might dart
                        into the dank soft of wood

with any misstep on her part.  I remember
            the television warmed

a second before flicking on,

                        that it had a dial, & the class so quiet
            I could feel the catch of each turn

landing into its notch
                        & continuing on as if it was my spinal cord, 

my vertebrae with each notch moving onward. 
            I remember a grainy version of them.
 
                        That they were older kids, baggy sweaters
                                    & ill-fitting jeans, running out of a school,

hands glued to the back of their heads,
                        ducking beneath an invisible boom, heads lowered
            as if in prayer. I remember

                        the policeman who spoke in front of a podium
had a mustache like my father’s

            & the woman newscaster’s hair tangled
like a bushel of wheat. I remember men on rooftops

            in army gear, guns drawn

                        pointed at a school in Colorado.  At that age,
the only thing I knew of Colorado
            was the Rocky Mountains were there

& of the snow in those mountains

            killing the Donner party, & the Donner party
killing the Donner party,
 
& the first time I ever heard the word cannibalism.

                        I remember we were taught
            they so badly wanted to live in California
to start new, back when California

            still touched Texas like a brother’s shoulder.  Now,
I don’t think the Donner party even died
                                   
                        in Colorado. The Donner party
might not have even stepped foot
            in Colorado, is how much I knew
           
about Colorado in April of 1999

                                    before a lazy graphic spun
                                                onto the screen, which came to be known as a swipe
 from center to lower right, reading 

                        13 people dead,
            which is then & now the lucky number of my family.
                                   
I remember Bill Clinton’s face
            red & puffy, & he speaking slow

                                    with his pointer finger
that day, back in the days

            where he was tough on crime
                        & lax on domestic terrorism. Think bloated prisons, think

Waco, think Super Predator, Unabomber, Oklahoma City & Wal-Mart.
            Think all the things we learned

                        & did not learn on a television screen
during social studies class in the sixth grade.

            I remember a police officer said  There were two
loner teenage gunman,
                                               
            which means each gunman had one more friend than I that day.
                        I grew up

in the country of they are trying to take our guns away
            from us. I grew up in the country of they                     
           
took our children away with their guns. 
                        I grew up in the country of they took our children
            away. I grew up in the country of they took our children
with their guns. I grew up
           
                        in the country of they took
our children away with their guns.

            I grew

up in the country of they took
            our children away. 

                        I grew up in the country of they
took our children away with their guns. I

                        grew up in the country
            of they took & took & took & took our children
           
                        away with our guns
                                               
& they broadcasted it on television,
            so I could learn
                       
                        something of America in my social studies class. 





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Keegan Lester is the author of  this shouldn't be beautiful but it was & it was all i had so i drew it, selected by Mary Ruefle for the 2016 Slope Editions Books Prize.  His poetry has appeared in The Academy of American Poets Poem A Day Series, The Boston Review, Diode, The Journal, and The Adroit Journal among others.  He is the poetry editor and co-founder of the journal Souvenir Lit and tweets at @keeganmlester.