#HOW DANGEROUS IS THE SOUND OF A GUNSHOT TV#
#HOW DANGEROUS IS THE SOUND OF A GUNSHOT CRACK#

The sound of a gun comes in hashtag bursts and then silences again. We shook our heads together, each of us waiting with our sicknesses, counted the numbers out like a prescription, counted them out like rosary beads.

#HOW DANGEROUS IS THE SOUND OF A GUNSHOT TV#

Last week, at the doctor’s office for blood results, I watched as the waiting room TV broadcast another volley of gunshots: this time in a park just blocks from a Brownsville school where I’ve taught poetry the past three years. This number, of course, is likely incomplete. In the three years since grad school that I’ve been teaching in New York’s public schools, there have been exactly 100 school shootings in the United States.

– Christian, 7th gradeīy the time I finished the two years of my degree, in the same way that I had ceased to hear the New York City sirens at night, the sound of a gun had been deadened by its frequency. The shooting of Tamir Rice by a cop in Ohio, the shooting of a historic black church in Charleston, the shooting of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, the shooting of a gay nightclub in Orlando.īang! Bang! Bang! Gunshots pierce through me and Abrihym. My graduate education was marked by a string of gunshots, each one perforating our studious silence. I imagine all the bodies in the room rearranging, trying to find a structure that will allow us to survive. As they discuss the structure of their essays- Intro, Body, Conclusion-break that body into paragraphs and rearrange them, I read down the list that’s posted on the wall- Avoid, Barricade, Confront. Sometimes, when my students are doing group work, I stand near the door where I have a clearer view. When I teach college freshmen, sometimes we read about the rhetoric of gun violence, sometimes students choose to research gun control, sometimes we analyze Childish Gambino’s viral music video, each gun-punctuated shot. As fall came on and I started my first semester of graduate school, the sound of a gun was echoed by a swell of protests along 125th street, hundreds of voices chanting while helicopters circled above: Hands up! Don’t Shoot! Hands up! Don’t shoot! The summer that I moved to the United States was the summer that Michael Brown was shot by a police officer in Ferguson. “Something you have more complicated feelings about?” I asked.

“What if I have a sound that I don’t only love or only hate?” When the time came to write, a student waved me over to her desk with a question.

#HOW DANGEROUS IS THE SOUND OF A GUNSHOT CRACK#

We brainstormed possibilities together: the crumpling of tin foil, the squelch of poking slime, the crack of opening a soda can, the squish of stirring mac-n-cheese. I asked a class of middle school students to write a poem about a sound that they love or hate.

How dangerous is the sound of a gunshot