Let’s practice getting under the desk.

Let’s practice barricading the door, turning the blinds

in our eyes. Shhh now. Let’s demonstrate

in utter silence. Every desk is a bunker in disguise.
I must have walked a hundred miles

in a single afternoon. No one followed,

pacing myself. Sunlight stained the leaves like glass.

Vine maples tangled in an avalanche of shine.
The protocol is not what you think.

The protocol is run hide fight. Step by step

the trail cut from granite

bleached and gleaming, strewn like the bones
of old calamity. Varied thrush

or rush hour radio, call note drowsy like a long fuse,

like pure denotation. Sometimes I hear guns

in the valley — pick-up trucks, tin cans, shattered bottles,
trigger trash. Sometimes I hear bullets

marching down the hall. Today there is no question

and answer. Today is only multiple choice —

the field trip wire lying in wait, mare’s tails combing the ridge
like movie weather. Crescendo of mountain.

Is this a classroom or a mortuary? Who can catch

a bullet in the mouth? Bullet points for extra credit.

Bullets for teeth, for the all above.
Kevin Craft is our Poet in Residence for January.

Previously: A Few Preexisting Conditions