When Someone Scratches a Swastika Onto a Stall in the Boys’ Bathroom
the Anti-Defamation League holds an assembly in our auditorium. After explaining who they are and why they’ve come, they show our students photos of kids their age on the big screen and ask them to determine, based on the photos, who they think would be a bully, a jock, a nerd, who looks like someone they’d want to sit with at lunch. (They do not ask students to pick out the likely school shooter).
Many hands go up. Students are eager to share their thoughts, some silly, some earnest. I notice then that my student Bennett who is on the Autism spectrum, has put his headphones on and is looking toward the door. He does not raise his hand. When the assembly is over, I pull him aside and ask why he did not participate. He shakes his head and looks past me, says there’s no way to know just by looking at someone, who they will be or what they might do.
Joan Kwon Glass is the winner of the 2024 Perugia Press Poetry Prize for her manuscript Daughter of Three Gone Kingdoms (forthcoming) and author of Night Swim, winner of the Diode Book Prize (Diode Editions, 2022).
