The World Is Round: Poems

Easy-Bake

68 easy-Bake Go home and tell your daughters they are beautiful. —stokely carmichael Every day there are more sightings, children latched to guns are in this year. School shootings all the rage. Especially young girls who don’t want to be girlfriends anymore. They, the widest target, the largest pile of bodies. White boys with high-powered rifles shirk, take position behind flowering trees, the birthday bow still tied in a knot at the trigger, their sights set on the whole school yard, the whole prayer circle. In the crosshairs, flipping back and forth, is it a deer grazing peacefully, or a little girl saying No. Across town, Black boys prefer close range, hot pistols no bigger than their hands burn their six-pack stomachs, they call out another Black boy’s name, On your mark, get set, Bitch. In the news this morning, right beside the most recent school shooting, advertisements; toy Easy-Bake ovens with the caption, “What Every Little Girl Wants!” 69 My eyes zoom in back and forth. The bodies of the girls are rolled out covered in white sheets, a mother is screaming her way through the crowd. Inside the doors of those Easy-Bake ovens I imagine a place for bulletproof shields, something for the unspoken, for after we teach our daughters to cook, clean, and walk two steps behind any man; as long as he is that. I imagine a matching ensemble, an Easy-Bake vest and shield, so that they might defend themselves from what we are teaching our sons. ...