At the sound that is
not firecrackers,
reports begin to come
in. It’s local time, late
afternoon in California.
Children are fleeing
an inflatable slide,
mothers and fathers,
grandmothers, too,
fanning out in search
of hiding spots
behind tents, in food
booths, anywhere
the shooter is not.
It’s “Go! Go! Go!”
electric highway signs
flashing motorists’ way
to Gilroy Garlic Festival,
“the world’s greatest
summer food festival”
suddenly become another
active crime scene.
—
Santino William Legan,
19, camouflaged, assault
-rifle in hand, shoots
left to right, right to left,
his spray of bullets
that nightmare that
nobody can imagine,
even after 31,983
gun-violence incidents
in America this year.
—
Security officers
already on the scene
“engaged the suspect
in less than a minute,”
Gilroy’s police chief
afterward explains.
But he can offer
no motive, cannot
assure the relatives
of eleven wounded
their loved ones will
get better. And no,
he has no answer
for Alberto Romero
father of six-year-old,
Stephen, who “had
his whole life to live”
and now must be
laid to rest, never
having once tasted
garlic ice cream.
________
Maureen Doallas has published work at Rattle’s Poets Respond, Every Day Poems, and other periodicals and is anthologized most recently in “The Dreamers” and “A Constellation of Kisses.” She is the editor of Artist Watch at Escape Into Life. Her debut collection is “Neruda’s Memoirs.”
________
