Susan Ayres | The Blessed Second | Poets Resist

Poets Resist
Edited by Daniel Cureton
December 3, 2019

Susan Ayres

The Blessed Second

You send your child to school, you run a marathon, you glimpse assault weapons from the corner of your eyes. You roll past greeters at Walmart, study the crowd. How can you not fear humanity? Lone gunman, August 3, 2019 sprayed lead from a semi-automatic purchased online from Romania. Think of it like a BMW or a Mercedes You get it through a local dealer here. It’s your right under the Blessed Second the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. The lone gunman so far from home had driven hours west to my birth town El Paso a border town. How can you not fear humanity? At the same time, my teenager flew the same path across Texas to visit his grandfather who walks in the mall near Walmart every morning who wasn’t sure he could reach the airport. So many streets blocked off.

22 dead Leonardo Campos, Jr., Maribel Campos, David Alvah Johnson, Ivan Filiberto Manzano, Jordan Anchondo, Andre Pablo Anchondo, Arturo Benavidez, Javier Amir Rodriguez, Sara Esther Regalado Moriel, Adolfo Cerros Hernández, Gloria Irma Márquez, María Eugenia Legarreta Rothe, Elsa Mendoza de la Mora, Juan de Dios Veláques Chairez, Maria Flores, Raul Flores, Margie Reckard, Alexander Gerhard Hoffman, Teresa Sanchez, Angelina Silva Englisbee, Jorge Calvillo Garcia, Luis Alfonzo Juarez. 24 wounded

And for a blessed second, the shooter wondered why has no one shot him? He had expected to die. He had posted his manifesto. This attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas. They are the instigators, not me. I am simply defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion. Long before the election of Trump, before the promise to build a wall before Trump’s tweets of invasions and bad hombres you didn’t think twice about your brown skin in a border town like my home town. El Paso: pop. 682,669 Median income: $44,431 Whites: 13.4% Hispanics: 80.8% Allen: pop. 103,383 Median income: $109,978 Whites: 61.1% Hispanics: 10.9% Here in Texas we protect our right to conceal carry or open carry. Our new law extends to brass knuckles, clubs, trench knives, blackjacks, and tomahawks — useful implements every blessed second. Other countries issue travel warnings against the US: a gun society.

"The italicized phrase How can you not fear humanity comes from Ada Límon. The other italicized lines and boxed captions come from news sources or websites.