| r.kv.r.y. quarterly literary journal summer-fall 2007 poetry by lily corwin |
Blacksburg, Virginia Throws a Picnic, 5 Days After 32 of Us are Killed
The smell of flowers, sent, of course, to comfort, is overwhelming, even out
of doors.
My friend at the local flower shop has not slept in a week,
busy arranging orange carnations with maroon ones,
stapling ribbons together,
and fending off the vampire press.
We do not have the infrastructure for this kind of tragedy.
We are not that kind of town.
We do the simpler, silly things of life well:
the eating, the drinking, the football, the street fair.
Set up for nearly a week here are 33 piles of flowers,
tents full of candles,
and sheet after sheet after sheet of long wide paper.
Ineloquent, unsubtle,
and almost unfathomably touching messages cover them,
sprawled, writers bending down awkwardly,
with black Sharpies.
I have been crying too much maybe, self-indulgently.
I have not cried enough, perhaps, allowing myself laughter and distraction.
Is it a desire for purgation or a morbid prurience that keeps me reading
sheet after sheet?
The anxieties surrounding the sorrow are worse than the sorrow itself,
which seeks and demands no reply,
the fear at the heart of it the fear that,
after wounded mourning feet have padded over our grass,
after fingers worn with worry and prayer have brushed over our Hokie Stone,
after the world has learned our name,
after such extraordinary pain,
we will be changed.
All of a sudden, like a gunshot, an ungainly staccato pop
disturbs the solemn air,
the sound of loudspeakers unceremoniously turned on
followed by an ugly amplified hissing.
At first people look around, shocked, as though it is not right to
picnic on a graveyard,
to revel on a crime scene.
Then, the familiar and life-affirming sounds of rock n roll
boom out over the Drill Field, joining the smells of pizza and hotdogs,
which weave around mourners, picnickers,
the familiar chaos of children throwing frisbees
and dogs barking at other dogs
as the early summer sun lowers slightly.
It's alright. It's all right. It is still my home.
The smell of flowers, sent, of course, to comfort, is overwhelming, even out
of doors.
My friend at the local flower shop has not slept in a week,
busy arranging orange carnations with maroon ones,
stapling ribbons together,
and fending off the vampire press.
We do not have the infrastructure for this kind of tragedy.
We are not that kind of town.
We do the simpler, silly things of life well:
the eating, the drinking, the football, the street fair.
Set up for nearly a week here are 33 piles of flowers,
tents full of candles,
and sheet after sheet after sheet of long wide paper.
Ineloquent, unsubtle,
and almost unfathomably touching messages cover them,
sprawled, writers bending down awkwardly,
with black Sharpies.
I have been crying too much maybe, self-indulgently.
I have not cried enough, perhaps, allowing myself laughter and distraction.
Is it a desire for purgation or a morbid prurience that keeps me reading
sheet after sheet?
The anxieties surrounding the sorrow are worse than the sorrow itself,
which seeks and demands no reply,
the fear at the heart of it the fear that,
after wounded mourning feet have padded over our grass,
after fingers worn with worry and prayer have brushed over our Hokie Stone,
after the world has learned our name,
after such extraordinary pain,
we will be changed.
All of a sudden, like a gunshot, an ungainly staccato pop
disturbs the solemn air,
the sound of loudspeakers unceremoniously turned on
followed by an ugly amplified hissing.
At first people look around, shocked, as though it is not right to
picnic on a graveyard,
to revel on a crime scene.
Then, the familiar and life-affirming sounds of rock n roll
boom out over the Drill Field, joining the smells of pizza and hotdogs,
which weave around mourners, picnickers,
the familiar chaos of children throwing frisbees
and dogs barking at other dogs
as the early summer sun lowers slightly.
It's alright. It's all right. It is still my home.