Amanda Nicole Corbin
Amanda Nicole Corbin is an Ohio-based poet who has had her work published or forthcoming in The Notre Dame Review, The London Magazine, Door is a Jar, Palette Poetry, and more. Her work was nominated for Best Microfiction 2024 & 2025. Her debut full-length collection, addiction is a sweet dark room, (Another New Calligraphy, 2024) focuses largely on her journey and struggles with mental health and addiction. Find her on Threads, Bluesky, and Instagram at @ancpoet.
i am attempting to babyproof when i learn of another school shooting
outside my window, all kinds of downpour. all kinds of grief. inside
my house, a game of manhunt with the walls: tiny mouths luring
tinier fingers to electric death, the kind you hear about maybe once
or twice a year. still, futility is the food i try not to feed my son. so i
continue my search for all kinds of ways to protect him from power
and people. this time, it’s wisconsin. the guilt of relief i swallow
when it’s not ohio, as if kent state or cleveland or dayton are safe harbors
and not sodden headstones. children have a way
of showing us our exit wounds; when electricity is trapped, it cores
the same gorge as any other bullet. we are flesh crafted to conduct lead
like light. if you include a baby– or a child–
with the proof in your search, you’ll see what i mean. first they say four dead
at the school but now it’s three. i can’t seem to use the word
only. children have a way of doing this–showing what is or is not
proven. how dough is not yet a loaf but a budding bit of bread or how
many things can hold a bullet
but not refuse one. the same year the original childsafe plug is patented,
a schoolyard of military boys fire guns
thought to be empty
and a nine-year-old’s play is no longer pretend. if you’ve never held
your breath in the back of a classroom, you know a special kind
of freedom. my son can’t yet crawl but there is still peace
in prevention, peace in practice, peace in these small pieces of plastic,
so i scour my floors for any hidden injury, scrutinize
everything that shines.
