A Web-Exclusive Poem from Cameron Barnett’s New Collection

Grandpa’s Gavel

I am mad at the red shelf for how tenderly it holds
the finished wood of my grandpa’s gavel because,
really, I am ashamed to hold it, afraid my hands don’t
carry tenderness quite the same, so when I do gather
the sense to stand and face it, my palm unfurled

over the handle like a rain cloud, it’s not lost on me
how I darken its sheen. I take it into my hand, and
it’s now 1959 and I’m in the room: NAACP gathered,
Grandpa pounding the sounding block to call
order—here, big decisions get made; here, activism

happens, ingrained into mallet and memory, and I am
mad again, this time at how little I can see from my clouding
of the room. Getting in my own way is my best trick;
getting in Grandpa’s way is a new trick I try
when I pry the gavel from him, and now it’s 1975

and I’m in his church watching righteousness rain down
from his every word, so I bow low in the back pew and pray
to be less shadow here and more snow—yes, pray that I may
accumulate, not obfuscate; yes, I pray his prayers don’t find me
here, unable to face him, his beautiful words, his heart so set

on justice. So I pick up his gavel once more, and now
we are caught in a SoCal sunset, and time has wrinkled him,
and time has also brought me to be, and this time he doesn’t
lift a gavel, but a grandson, his second one. Does he second-
guess his life’s work, entrusted to this careful boy? Does he notice

the clouds gathering where the sun makes its exit? Do I notice,
as my hand moves for the gavel again, how tenderly he held me,
as if this were inheritance, as if something in me spoke
carefully of a place to rest his soul? Is this why I can’t lift it,
even now, even then? Is this why the curl of my hand around

the stained maple reminds me of a fist, and recoil rips
through my veins? Pop, I want to be brave like you, but
even a taillight can kill these days; these days, the bullets
and bombs you dodged in church have followed us
to schools and streets and theaters and stores and squares,

and it’s like a cloud hangs over the world all the time,
and I am just scared of holding this weight. The world eats me
alive and never knows it. Could I ever have an ounce
of your courage? Could I face myself and all
the prayers you placed in me, raining over

a world awash in chaos? I take this gavel,
and all I am is right here. I’m brave enough
to do that. I’m brave enough to be, for you,
a bridge, perhaps. You were called to be strong
so that I might be your tenderness, but

is this enough? Is this enough? A question I weigh
each time I grasp this gavel, each time I place it back
on the red shelf, each time I pass by with a clouded
heart hoping for release, hoping to get a grip, hoping
to lift you up one day just the way you deserve.

---

“Grandpa’s Gavel” is from Murmur. Reprinted by permission of Autumn House Press. Copyright © 2024 by Cameron Barnett.

Cameron Barnett is a poet and teacher from Pittsburgh. He is the author of Murmur and The Drowning Boy’s Guide to Water, the winner of the Autumn House Press Rising Writer Prize and a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. He is a graduate of Duquesne University and earned an MFA in creative writing from the University of Pittsburgh. Other honors include a 2019 Carol R. Brown Creative Achievement Award for Emerging Artist and serving as the ’22-’24 Emerging Black Writer in Residence at Chatham University. Cameron teaches at his middle-school alma mater, Falk Laboratory School. His work explores the complexity of race, place, and relationships for Black people in America.