..:h a z e l w o o d:..

Hazelwood

You’ll see it on the news every night:
“This evening, gunshots disturbed the air
on Flowers Avenue. The fatal fight

began at six, just after rush hour,
and a stray bullet wounded Ray Wilson,
age thirty-three. He died after four

this morning. He left behind a newborn son
and a beautiful wife, age thirty-two.”
He’s dead, and no one knew he’d begun

his second novel, and the first’s debut
was just under seven weeks away,
or that he had six library books overdue.

The breaking news on the next day:
“Twin four-year-olds on Elizabeth Street
were looking out the window when they

fell through the screen and hit the concrete
three stories below.” The mother, too busy
getting high, didn’t see them fall thirty feet,

didn’t hear their skulls crack on the fuzzy
moss growing out of the pavement. Their dad
was making a deal down the road. Is he

going to care that his babies are dead?
He stepped over their bodies when going
inside; the meth was too heavy on his head

to think straight. He walked without knowing
his children were crushed under his Timberlands.
Inside, the television was showing

the ten o’clock news—two crying women
placed a cross on the side of the road:
“In fondest memory of Ray Wilson—

loving husband and father,” they wrote.
And his tiny son will grow up without
seeing Daddy’s face, and he won’t know

Daddy’s voice. And one day, he’ll go out
and have to walk through Hazelwood.
He’s not going to know about

the little girls that died, whose blood
still sticks to the concrete, whose father’s
missed shot hit right where he stood.