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The Opposites Game

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For Patricia Maisch

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This day my students and 
I play the Opposites Game

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with a line from Emily Dickinson. 
My life had stood

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a loaded gun, it goes and 
I write it on the board,

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pausing so they can call 
out the antonyms –

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My Your

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Life Death

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Had stood ? Will sit

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A Many

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Loaded Empty

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Gun ?

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Gun.

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For a moment, very much 
like the one between

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lightning and its sound, 
the children just stare at me,

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and then it comes, a flurry, 
a hail storm of answers –

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Flower, says one. No, Book, says another. 
That's stupid,

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cries a third, the opposite of a 
gun is a pillow. Or maybe

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a hug, but not a book, 
no way is it a book. With this,

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the others gather their thoughts

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and suddenly it’s a shouting match. 
No one can agree,

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for every student there’s a final answer. 
It's a song,

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a prayer, I mean a promise, 
like a wedding ring, and

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later a baby. Or what’s that 
person who delivers babies?

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A midwife? Yes, a midwife. 
No, that’s wrong. You're so

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wrong you’ll never be right again. 
It's a whisper, a star,

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it's saying I love you into your 
hand and then touching

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someone's ear. Are you crazy? 
Are you the president

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of Stupid-land? You should be, 
When's the election?

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It’s a teddy bear, a sword, 
a perfect, perfect peach.

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Go back to the first one, 
it's a flower, a white rose.

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When the bell rings, I reach 
for an eraser but a girl

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snatches it from my hand. 
Nothing's decided, she says,

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We’re not done here. 
I leave all the answers

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on the board. The next day 
some of them have

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stopped talking to each other, 
they’ve taken sides.

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There's a Flower club. 
And a Kitten club. And two boys

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calling themselves The Snowballs. 
The rest have stuck

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with the original game, 
which was to try to write

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something like poetry.

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It's a diamond, it's a dance,

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the opposite of a gun is 
a museum in France.

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It's the moon, it's a mirror,

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it's the sound of a bell and the hearer.

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The arguing starts again, 
more shouting, and finally

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a new club. For the first time 
I dare to push them.

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Maybe all of you are right, I say.

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Well, maybe. Maybe it's everything 
we said. Maybe it’s

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everything we didn't say. It's words 
and the spaces for words.

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They're looking at each other now. 
It's everything in this

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room

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and outside this room and down 
the street and in the sky.

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It's everyone on campus and at the mall, 
and all the people

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waiting at the hospital.
And at the post office. And, yeah,

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it's a flower, too. All the flowers. 
The whole garden.

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The opposite of a gun is 
wherever you point it.

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Don’t write that on the board, 
they say. Just say poem.

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Your death will sit through 
many empty poems.

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Hi, my name is Brendan Constantine

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and I wrote "The Opposites Game."

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Back in 2016,

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I was asked to participate

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in a rally for an event called,

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"Gun Violence Awareness Day."

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This particular rally was being held 
in Tucsan,

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and was being coordinated in part
by a lady named Patricia Maisch.

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And she asked if I would come out

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and read poetry as part of the day's event

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and she told me that all sorts of folks 
were going to be there,

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including people who opposed the event,

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but also in the audience would be friends
and family of people who were struck down

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during the infamous Tucson shooting 
of January 2011,

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when Representative Gabrielle 
Giffords was shot.

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A number of people were shot that day,

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and there were a number of deaths,

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and I was told that family members 
of some of the fallen,

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including the mother of Christina Taylor 
Green, was going to be there.

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She was a small child 
who was killed that day.

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And the lady who invited me, Patricia,

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is a remarkable woman,

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who had helped to disarm the shooter 
that day.

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So I had this strange sort of burden,

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I thought, well of course 
I'm going to go do this,

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somebody's asked for a poem,

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but at the same time I thought,

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"What on earth am I going to say?"

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And of course the answer was right
in front of me,

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because as a school teacher I'd recently
had the very experience

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that's talked about in the poem,

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but I'd never written about it.

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And sometimes it just seems to fall in
your lap, you know?

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You look around and you go,

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"Oh my goodness, I'm actually walking
around in a poem right now."

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So I wrote it in a panic,

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and I wrote it in the service of poetry.

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Somebody asked for a poem for something,

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and I tried to provide it.

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I guess the most surprising experience of
the poem, and finding out where it landed

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was during the March for Our Lives,

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the large national demonstration.

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Early in the day, people started to send
me texts of people carrying banners

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with lines from the poem on them.

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The line, "The opposite of a gun is
wherever you point it,"

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started showing up on signs and banners

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and even t-shirts...

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and all people I didn't know, I mean
I didn't know any of these people.

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And again, that's sort of odd cause they 
didn't just read the poem in a magazine

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they took a line out of it and carried
that line around with them.

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I mean that's, that's amazing,

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and at that point you just go,

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"Well this isn't your poem anymore,

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this is their poem now.

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This is Patricia's poem.

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This poem belongs to everybody that
remembers it."

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So that was hugely surprising.

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I think everybody should read Brigit
Pegeen Kelly's poem, "Song."

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It's not an easy poem,

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it is a breathtaking, heartrending poem,

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it's a poem about childhood,

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it's a poem about magic,

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it's a poem about grief,

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and it is a poem about sweetness,

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the sweetness in everything,

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especially the sweetness in heartbreak.

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I saw her read it, and when she finished,

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I was a different writer.