THIS SCHOOL

sun prism

This school
never closes
though students can
be dismissed any time
they can never go home
again
and again they try
to master today’s lesson
for totally ingrained
is the grief for today
as it fades
and the fear
of what the new teacher,
tomorrow,
will require of us

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Blaise Kielar received Honorable Mention in the 2022 Alex Albright Creative Nonfiction Prize for an excerpt from his memoir in progress, "Be Heard: The Quiet Kid Who Started the World’s Loudest Violin Shop." He opened Chapel Hill’s first violin shop in 1978 and retired from a music retail career by transitioning Electric Violin Shop into the first worker-owned co-op music store in the United States. He plays jazz violin and clarinet in several bands and leads the Bulltown Strutters, Durham’s community New Orleans brass band.