Mitchell Nobis
I stepped off the Metro
in March to a sea of teenagers
still holding their signs:
“I’ll miss my friends more
than you’ll miss your guns.”
Their faces alive with voice,
their eyes beacons of belief,
the students straggled toward home, the protest over.
They walked past monuments to
war & to warriors.
Thirty-five children & teachers
have been torn to death
by bullets at school this year.
It is not yet summer.
Seniors graduate today.
The children hollered
at the Capitol, brandished slogans—
“Protect us, not guns”—openly carried their
signs high above their heads,
packing words with pride.
In 2013, the Advanced Placement English
Language & Composition exam asked
students to write an essay that would
“examine the factors a group or agency should consider in
memorializing an event or person and in creating a monument.”
I walked down the mall as
students marched away past monuments to
war to war to war, holding their signs:
“The scariest thing in a school
should be my grades.”
476,277 students wrote an essay
that year explaining what’s worth
memorializing, what merits a monument—
this year thirty-five kids & teachers died, shot
at school, more Americans
dead at school than war but who’s at war, really. We
have enlisted grunts
without their permissions or sixteenth birthdays.
“Examine the factors a group or agency should consider in
memorializing an event or person and in creating a monument.”
“I’ve never really thought about that
before” the students said, but
they have now
as they laugh together,
ready to bury yesterday for tomorrow.
Mitchell Nobis is a writer and K-12 teacher in Metro Detroit. His poetry has appeared in HAD, Roanoke Review, No Contact, Dunes Review, and others. He is a co-director of the Red Cedar Writing Project and hosts the Wednesday Night Sessions reading series. Find him at @MitchNobis or mitchnobis.com.