Kathy Smaltz

 Survivors
 He calls – the boy I used to know,
 now a man, a reporter, asking me for an
 interview: how to make meaning
 out of senseless trauma years later,
 how to talk calmly about the other boy, 
 his classmate, the shotgun, the
 eight minutes in a bathroom stall
 listening to footsteps echo in
 empty hallways.
  
 If I tell him anything, I will tell him this:
 I know something of the night.
 How midnight minutes can stretch into hours, 
 how shadows can shift,
 how the beating heart can echo through the 
 body, into the stomach,
 how violence can pop off from an assault rifle,
 how weapons can be stored, hidden,
 in the trunk of a car.
  
 All these years later, I still teach
 in a school, alert to loud noises and 
 potential incidents:
 Once a girl cut herself in the bathroom,
 stumbled into the hallway right outside
 my classroom. I heard her scream, 
 opened my door, saw her limping,
 supported by a boy – thought I saw
 the reflection of light on metal,
 misunderstood, locked down my 
 classroom, crouched in the corner behind
 my desk, called the office, 
 whispered into the phone.
  
 Another time, a boy walked through
 the hallway carrying what looked like
 a rifle slung over his shoulder but
 turned out to be a martial arts stick.
 My heart beating in my chest, 
 I ran to the security guard.
  
 Just last week, another trick:
 I heard a pop outside, then three more –
 Pop, pop, pop through the open window.
 A boy in my class heard it too, looked up
 gunshots or firecrackers? Our school’s
 in a rural area, lots of private shooting
 ranges in neighbors’ yards. Security
 came, told my class: private citizen shooting 
 at targets in his yard. 
  
 I float down this river of potential
 violence, am not surprised at news of 
 the next mass shooting, only at the
 spasm of grace saved for us:
 This boy I taught calling me 17 years
 later, and the way it went down 
 that day, peacefully, like a prayer,
 fingers on rosary beads, 
 minutes like hours – 
 SWAT team arriving, 
 no shots fired, how for 22 
 minutes, my body waited for 
 Pop, pop, pop – an attack that didn’t 
 come, weapons seized not fired, 
 students and teachers crouched in closets, 
 cubbies, and bathroom stalls –
 we, the lucky, survivors.
  
 © Kathy Smaltz, April 2021 

Author’s Statement:

A year later, we are still living in a pandemic world but one that at least has familiar borders, expectations, and at whose edges we are pushing in our desire for normalcy. That’s why I chose last year’s 30 for 30 poem, “Roots,” for one of my collage choices and then an old favorite of mine, “Part to Whole,” from my book, Pieces. My first collection of poetry, Pieces was published in Fall of 2019, and I had a busy reading schedule to promote it when the pandemic hit. Over the past year, we have witnessed the murder of many of our African-American brothers and sisters – in addition to the hundreds of thousands who have died due to COVID-19 – and the collection of words gathered from both poems led me to an article on a different American scourge – yet another mass shooting, this time at the Indianapolis Fed-Ex facility. It’s now believed that it was – like others before it – racially motivated. At a time when our nation needs healing, it is reprehensible to me that more people are turning to violence. As it is also the 10^th anniversary of the Virginia Tech massacre, my collage words brought me back to June, 2004 when I was a hostage at a middle school here in Northern Virginia: the 13 year old didn’t fire a shot but his arsenal was replete with countless weapons. May we kindle in ourselves the kindness that is everyone’s birth right, and may we show it each day so that we radiate light and love.

Poems used:

“Roots” by Kathy Smaltz. 30 for 30, April 2020. Reprinted with permission: COVID Poetry and Arts Project.

“Part to Whole” by Kathy Smaltz. Pieces, September 2019. Piedmont Journal of Fiction and Poetry.

Article:

“FedEx facility shooter bought two weapons used in killings legally last year despite FBI concerns” https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/18/us/indianapolis-shooting-fedex-sunday/index.html

Author Bio:

Kathy Smaltz is a full time Creative Writing teacher, mother of four, and wife in Northern Virginia where she’s lived for the past 27 years. She has a jovial yellow Labrador retriever who barks at nothing and a mole hunting cat who sleeps all day like he’s hung over from hunting all night. Her first poetry collection, Pieces, was published by Piedmont Journal of Poetry and Fiction Press in Fall 2019 and is available on Amazon. She was the Prince William County Poet Laureate from 2016-2018, is a VCCA fellow and has had residencies in both Amherst and Auvillar, France. She earned her undergraduate degree in English from the College of William and Mary and her MFA from George Mason University and is an active member of the Poetry Society of Virginia. Since she teaches all day on Zoom while managing a hybrid class of middle school students, she looks forward to the day when in person readings reign once more and the tyranny of little black boxes with white names has passed. 

30 for 30 is sponsored by Potomac Review