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      March 7, 2025Safety DrillAmy Hughes

      The notice from my daughter’s school about the next
      safety drill arrives in my inbox the weekend
      before her first hunting trip. The notice from my daughter’s
      school does not mention the words intruder or gunman, my daughter
      does not know the meaning of mass shooting. The notice assures us,
      teachers will present the information in age-appropriate terminology:
      When I say go, we will play a game. She is at the table with her father,
      learning how pheasants take cover in the chokecherry, safe
      until forced to fly. We will pretend the man in the hall is hunting—
      Yes, like hide and seek. The teacher practices cowering with the children,
      keeps them quiet, remembers her training: gathers heavy books
      to throw. My daughter remembers her father, tender,
      teaching her how hunters flush bouquets of birds into the wind,
      teaching her to anticipate his shot so she isn’t afraid.
      I remember her first lost tooth, her first snow
      angels in the yard. The day they reported gunshots
      at an elementary school in Texas, I drove to her school
      in Ohio and sat in the parking lot, trembling as I watched
      the first graders run on the playground and the radio reported
      eye-witness accounts of parents in Texas pleading with officers,
      parents sneaking inside, searching coveys of classrooms as the shots
      rang in their teeth. The death toll will be nineteen
      children, and when my own child bounds to the car, iridescent
      with innocence, I do not tell her the reason for my tears. I tell her
      feathers found caught in the cattails are lucky, I tell her falling
      raindrops taste like lemon drops, and the villains in stories
      are just stories, not real, I tell her to play a game
      when she’s afraid: to fold her wings and hide
      like a pheasant in the field, I tell her to be so still the sky will tilt
      to kiss her face. Just wait—we will always come and find you, of course,
      we will always keep you safe and when it snows,
      we’ll make angels in the snow.
       

      from #86 – Poetry Prize

      Amy Hughes

      “As my daughter prepared for her first hunting trip (as an observer), I was thinking about the milestone of this loss of innocence: gunshots and death witnessed firsthand, up close. She’s a sensitive kid, but she wasn’t afraid because she would be with her dad. My children have complete faith that the adults who love them will always keep them safe. My children also practice lockdown drills at school multiple times a year because we have collectively accepted that schools are not safe from gun violence. Reading the safety drill notice, I had the absurd thought that learning how pheasants hide in the field might one day save my daughter’s life. When they left on the trip, she waved to me from the back of the truck, one arm around our beloved bird dog, face shining with excitement. The world is unbearably lovely and unbearably brutal, sometimes in the same breath. I don’t know if there’s any sense to be made of this. Poetry is how I try.”

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