i asked people for writing prompts and one that was given to me was to write about the kennedy assassination from the point of view of a school teacher.

"It is time for a new generation of leadership, to cope with new problems and new opportunities. For there is a new world to be won."* -John F. Kennedy

i'm a mathematical woman and i know
a bullet from a bolt action rifle
travels at a velocity of two thousand feet per second

i'm a mathematical woman and i know
if you fire three bullets straight at the target
there is more than a fifty percent chance
they will bite hungrily into bone

i am a mathematical woman but
i can know all of these things and still
i cannot derail a national tragedy
and i cannot lift a bleeding skull
from jackie's hands

i always thought the black and white truth
could show you facts through polaroid
laying bare the negatives and the positives
but now i stare at grainy pictures of the crime scene
and the parade that felt so hopeful
is exposed to be garish
the stains on mr kennedy's suit
are too dark for brave convictions
i can see the evil spattered across him
i wonder what kind of person would ever
spit wounds on such a face
like that

i was bringing these pictures
back to my children
lined up in elementary school rows
my instinct now is to not show them
the chronic pain that pulses
through frescos of execution
the pollution of optimism
curdling in the wake
bottoming out and trickling down
pooling into pipe dreams
maybe when they're older they can understand
the way he was pitched headlong
into the arms of crying doves

i wonder if my influence will determine
the presence of another lee harvey oswald
in the births of my classroom
does he sits in the back
in one of those plastic seats
is he hungering for the encumbrance of
a fresh pistol with a safety that never shuts up
a barrel that hums against his shoulder blade
a friendly trigger to hold hands with
is there any possibility i could hold the responsibility
of taking the attendance
maybe calling the name of an impending killer
can i possibly bear the weight of human suffering
in equations of newspaper pages devoted to assassination
and half developed pictures of growing people

i love children
i pray for their ability to flourish
i teach them to measure their worth
beyond the lengths of wooden rulers
their transformation to flowering petals
from pygmy buds
is full of pollen ambitions
the promise and possibility
of barren soil blooming into gardens
i'm a mathematical woman
but my love has no limits
no square roots or dividends
and i never
claimed to have the answers
and though i am here to edify
i still have a lot of questions

so let me ask you this
if i do not pluck dandelions
from my garden by their stems
if i allow them to grow and do not
sever them from their soil
is a murderer growing in my garden
or am i growing a murderer