Kent State shootings, May 4, 1970

May magnifies magnolias and memories,  
red ones as bright as drops of chosen blood. 
Holocaustic flashes return to springtime air;
tortured souls can’t cross over to the dead.

Protests inflame the presidential lung.
Under white cotton sheets trigger men lie.
Student, beware the angles of geometry. 
“The shortest distance between two points is over four corpses.” 

Thirteen seconds in Kent elicits screams.
The demonstrations die like tulips near 
the end of May. “Dick always planned things out.”
Ohio… ‘mong four, three of them were Jews 
whose parents fled. There is no promised land;
open to any page and bloodshed speaks.