Poetry

Phil Roeder photo

By

Elizabeth S. Wolf

Is God On Our Side

Some classrooms

are now storing

buckets of rocks

so children can

stone a shooter.

We are raising

a generation

of Davids

rather than

disarming

Goliath.

The Busboy from the Ambassador Hotel

I held history in my hands

and it bled out. I don’t know why.

I was nobody then. The bullet

that missed me took his life

and shattered my country. Why

he stopped to shake my hand,

a Mexican busboy spattered with

grill grease, I will never know.

He fell before I even heard the gun.

I held his head off of the hard floor,

I didn’t want him to be alone, to die

for me. He wasn’t Jesus. I grabbed

rosary beads from my pocket and

placed them in his splayed palm. I had

sinned: I changed the course of the world

by taking his hand. The photographer

changed the course of my life

by taking that one stark

shadowy shot. If only we could do it

all over again, I would step

into the path

of the bullet.

Elizabeth S. Wolf

Elizabeth S. Wolf writes because telling stories is how we make sense of our world, how we heal, and how we celebrate. She seeks that sliver of truth amidst the chattering monkey mind. Also, she sings loudly while driving. Elizabeth’s poems have appeared in journals & anthologies. Her 2018 Rattle Chapbook “Did You Know?” will be published in Summer, 2019. Follow Elizabeth at amazon.com/author/esw.