It is Dangerous to Read Newspapers

By Margaret Atwood

While I was building neat

castles in the sandbox,
the hasty pits were
filling with bulldozed corpses

and as I walked to the school

washed and combed, my feet
stepping on the cracks in the cement
detonated red bombs.

Now I am grownup
and literate, and I sit in my chair
as quietly as a fuse

and the jungles are flaming, the under-

brush is charged with soldiers,
the names on the difficult
maps go up in smoke.

I am the cause, I am a stockpile of chemical

toys, my body
is a deadly gadget,
I reach out in love, my hands are guns,
my good intentions are completely lethal.

Even my
passive eyes transmute
everything I look at to the pocked
black and white of a war photo,
how
can I stop myself

It is dangerous to read newspapers.

Each time I hit a key

on my electric typewriter,
speaking of peaceful trees

another village explodes.

(by Margaret Atwood, 1939-)

Student example, inspired by Atwood’s poem:

Immigration in the Newspaper by Jayvon

When I was at school

hearing the tapping of pens
the immigrants in Arizona were hearing
how they’re aliens and don’t belong.

As I fell asleep in science class

The immigrant fell on the hot dirt floor
Of Arizona with hands behind his ack
From the push of the cop.

As I take the car ride home in my luxurious car with AC

The thirty immigrants are getting
A hot, bumpy, and horrible ride back to the border.

As I rest myself in my comfortable warm bed

The poor immigrants are dumped
Into the cold unforgiving place they ran away from.

It is dangerous to read newspapers.

Inspired by Margaret Atwood’s “It Is Dangerous to Read Newspapers”