A line in one of Michael Brownstein’s recent poems caught my attention and inspired me to write a piece about the Orlando nightclub shooting in 2016.
Michael’s piece, “The Druids and Amesemi,” contained a line that stuck with me—"Saturday night, late. (Perhaps it was Sunday morning, early.)” It brought to mind the fog of night when you really do not know what time it is, unlike the daylight hours where you can gauge the time of day by where the sun is in the sky. This is especially the case when trying to give a detailed account of something we may have witnessed.
The mass shooting in Orlando at the Pulse night club took place on Saturday night/Sunday morning, a night out that quickly turned tragic as one man turned Latin Night into an act of vengeance for the American airstrikes in Iraq and Syria against the Islamic State. By sunrise, 49 victims and the gunman were dead in a chaotic scene. In May it was announced that the site will become a memorial and a museum to honor the memory of the victims.
Poets are known to borrow, and I have borrowed from Michael (with his permission) the line I quoted above, and used it with slight modification.
Latin Night
Saturday night, late,
perhaps Sunday morning, early,
the few of us who still stand
are sobered by events
across the dance floor—
the lights, the carnage,
the force of one
drunk on rage
pushed upon those here
for a good time,
for just an evening
out with friends
who now are among the stilled,
the spilled,
whose eyes are frozen upon
one moment,
Saturday night, late,
perhaps Sunday morning, early.
| Copyright © 2021 by Maik Strosahl Michael E. Strosahl has focused on poetry for over twenty years, during which time he served a term as President of the Poetry Society of Indiana. He relocated to Jefferson City, Missouri, in 2018 and currently co-hosts a writers group there. |
Thanks for putting up such a wonderful poem--though I am a bit biased.
ReplyDeleteMaik, brilliant, the opening lines as the ending lines! And I’d like to share with your readers our conversation about the original draft of the poem’s being an incomplete sentence, which you suggested we “complete” by the very simple removal of a comma at the end of the 3rd line and the insertion of “are” at the beginning of the next. Readers who care can reverse those changes to see the incomplete sentence in question. While you and I thought the incompleteness could be symbolic of the lives lost on Latin Night, we agreed it seemed advisable to “complete” the sentence. Those 49 lives were incomplete when the shooter “completed” them.
ReplyDeleteThanks guys! Moris, it was fun to work that one out in a way that satisfied the grammar gods and also worked seamlessly into the poem. Michael, thanks again for the line that sent my mind running off to discover this piece.
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