By Constance Alexander/For The Sentinel
June has been National Pride Month since 1970. Part celebration and part protest, the roots of this tribute to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community reach back to June 28, 1969, in New York City, when The Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in lower Manhattan, was raided by police. Part of a pattern of harassment and social discrimination by law enforcement, the attack sparked six days of protests and galvanized the gay rights movement. America’s first pride parade was held on the one-year anniversary of Stonewall and has continued and proliferated around the U.S. and the world since then.
June also marks the anniversary of the slaughter at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, where a single assailant, armed with an automatic weapon, killed 49 people and wounded 53 more. It was the deadliest shooting in the U.S. since the September 11 attacks, and the deadliest in modern American history until 2017, when a shooter in Las Vegas master-minded a massacre that killed 60 and wounded at least 413.
Constance Alexander wrote the poem, “Counting Coup” a few days after June 12, 2017, for a community memorial service at the First Presbyterian Church in Murray, Ky.
Counting Coup
By Constance Alexander
For native American warriors, counting coup was a way to demonstrate bravery in war. Although killing was a part of war, the greater act of courage was to get close enough to touch the enemy.
On this, the day after,
we look back in anger
fists clenched
choking on prayers
and platitudes
the best we can do
in the face
of an automatic
assault weapon.
This, the best
I can do,
is a poem
without rainbows
or rhyme
an old impulse
to heal the wound
with image
and metaphor
Eight stanzas
tell the story:
Early Sunday
fifty died
fifty-three injured
at Pulse a disco bar
in Orlando.
A man twenty-nine
armed with an
AR-15 and
a smaller handgun
played God
because he once
saw two men
kissing. And then
the worst (up ‘til then)
mass shooting
in U.S. history.
When law enforcement
arrived and finally
penetrated
the kill space
they slipped in
pools of gore,
bodies piled
like unfolded
laundry. Blood
everywhere.
If anyone’s alive
they called
to survivors,
If anyone’s alive
please raise
your hand.
That’s what they said
Please raise your hand.
So begins the day after.
We have graduated
to a new level of
mass murder.
If anyone’s alive
please raise your hand.
You, you, and yes
you. Please raise
your hands.
Raise them.
Your hands.
Raise them.
And be counted.
Recipient of a Governor’s Award in the Arts, Constance Alexander has won numerous grants, awards, and residencies for her poetry, plays, prose, and civic journalism projects. Contact her at constancealexander@twc.com.
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