In Newspaper Sheets
by Pamela L. Laskin

So many boys dead on the streets
mamas cry out for babies around
cover their faces with newspaper sheets.

So many people suffer from heat
bodies in freezers weeping with sound
too many people die on the streets.

Virus and guns haunting the street
violence a plague that’s keeping us bound
so many stories in newspaper sheets.

Grief is a ghost setting the beat
sorrow a skin that falls to the ground
so many children dead on the street.

Piles of bodies, sorrow a feat
daily it grows a mountainous mound
can not be covered by just a sheet
too many people dead on the street.



Pamela L. Laskin is a children’s book author, poet, and lecturer at CCNY’s Poetry Outreach Program.  She is the editor of two anthologies, Life On The Moon: My Best Friend’s Secrets (Linus Publications, 2009), YA fiction and The Heroic Young Woman, original feminist fairy tales (Clique Calm, 2006). She is the author of two young adult novels, Ronit and Jamil (Harper Collins, 2017) and Why No Goodbye(Leapfrog Press, 2019), winner of the International Fiction Prize.