"The Opposites Game" by Brendan Constantine

The Opposites Game

For Patricia Maisch

This day my students and
I play the Opposites Game

with a line from Emily Dickinson.
My life had stood

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

pausing so they can call
out the antonyms –

My Your

Life Death

Had stood ? Will sit

A Many

Loaded Empty

Gun ?

Gun.

For a moment, very much
like the one between

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

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

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

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

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

the others gather their thoughts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

on the board. The next day
some of them have

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

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

calling themselves The Snowballs.
The rest have stuck

with the original game,
which was to try to write

something like poetry.

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

the opposite of a gun is
a museum in France.

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

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

The arguing starts again,
more shouting, and finally

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

Maybe all of you are right, I say.

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

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

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

room

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

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

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

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

The opposite of a gun is
wherever you point it.

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

Your death will sit through
many empty poems.

Hi, my name is Brendan Constantine

and I wrote "The Opposites Game."

Back in 2016,

I was asked to participate

in a rally for an event called,

"Gun Violence Awareness Day."

This particular rally was being held
in Tucsan,

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

And she asked if I would come out

and read poetry as part of the day's event

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

including people who opposed the event,

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

during the infamous Tucson shooting
of January 2011,

when Representative Gabrielle
Giffords was shot.

A number of people were shot that day,

and there were a number of deaths,

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

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

She was a small child
who was killed that day.

And the lady who invited me, Patricia,

is a remarkable woman,

who had helped to disarm the shooter
that day.

So I had this strange sort of burden,

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

somebody's asked for a poem,

but at the same time I thought,

"What on earth am I going to say?"

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

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

that's talked about in the poem,

but I'd never written about it.

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

You look around and you go,

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

So I wrote it in a panic,

and I wrote it in the service of poetry.

Somebody asked for a poem for something,

and I tried to provide it.

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

was during the March for Our Lives,

the large national demonstration.

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

with lines from the poem on them.

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

started showing up on signs and banners

and even t-shirts...

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

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

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

I mean that's, that's amazing,

and at that point you just go,

"Well this isn't your poem anymore,

this is their poem now.

This is Patricia's poem.

This poem belongs to everybody that
remembers it."

So that was hugely surprising.

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

It's not an easy poem,

it is a breathtaking, heartrending poem,

it's a poem about childhood,

it's a poem about magic,

it's a poem about grief,

and it is a poem about sweetness,

the sweetness in everything,

especially the sweetness in heartbreak.

I saw her read it, and when she finished,

I was a different writer.