Category: #GunViolence

Bell Tower on a Grassy Knoll by Joe Cottonwood

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unnamed

Frankly, an ugly structure of steel
like a square-legged spider
with the purest of heart,
a tower of one hundred forty bells.
Ocean air rises, falls, breaks like waves
ringing chimes above Bodega Bay.

Nicholas Green from this small town
at age seven was killed in far-off Italy
by highway robbers. His parents
donated his organs, new life for seven souls.
From Italy in gratitude, in sorrow
these bells etched with seven names.

Bells peal of hope.
In search of a more merciful world
we come, sit, listen.

Children come, do not sit, do not listen.
Children make offerings, a kite, a plastic airplane.
To the branches of a nearby pine
children tie handmade mobiles
marked with the names of dead siblings,
dead friends, shot schoolmates.
Here’s a string of origami hummingbirds,
and here on this branch among fog-damp needles
toy matchbox cars on fishline
dancing in the breeze. Dancing.

unnamed-1

Nicholas Green (September 9, 1987 – October 1, 1994).

 

Joe Cottonwood has built or repaired hundreds of houses in his day job as carpenter/contractor. Nights, he writes. His latest book is Foggy Dog: Poems of the Pacific Coast.

 

Photographs by Angus Parker and Lynn Donner. 

When We Glint by George Cassidy Payne

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dbm

When we glint
we are back in time,
and the road groans
like an oncoming
British squadron.

Wounded. We feel
witnessed by time-
by 200 years of war,

a theater of bitter
clouds and the noon
day sun conniving.

When we glint we
sail through the carnage-

hurtling outward toward
an uncertain future. A
breeze rippling the surface.

 

 

George Cassidy Payne is an independent writer, domestic violence social worker, adjunct professor of philosophy at Finger Lakes Community College, and a student of religion. He has degrees in the subject from St. John Fisher College, Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School, and Emory University. He lives and works in Rochester, NY.

 

Painting by Jenn Zed.

#Immigration #GunViolence: On Air, On Land, At Sea by Barbara Henning

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double_flat_g_by_frogstar_23-dbly1sf

—when surfing in 28 degree water—or stuck in traffic—for 63 hours a year—your brain freezes—your chin gets stiff—no angry mobs in Tehran—shouting “Death to America”— No McDonald’s in Tehran—instead, a homegrown Mash Donald——dreaming—of a woman with blonde hair—chin length—at a restaurant table—with a younger dejected bully—hey, don’t worry—she says looking down at him—I’ll let you see em later—he drops his head—a sad puppy—so sad—so horrible—when the phone rings—we all wake up—to headlines with his name—oh no—and they’re just not true—he says—everyone must love me—digital twitter talk—can’t be recaptured—and you can’t bury it—it’s out there—scattered in air, on land, at sea—North Africa to Europe—Seawatch reports—2400 migrants rescued—four children dead—
(26 Oct 2016)

First published in Posit: A Journal of Literature and Art.

 

 

Barbara Henning is the author of several collections of poetry, her most recent A Day Like Today (Negative Capability Press 2015). Other recents include A Swift Passage (Quale Press), Cities and Memory (Chax Press) and a collection of object-sonnets, My Autobiography (United Artists). She has published three novels, Thirty Miles to Rosebud, You Me and the Insects and Black Lace, and she is the editor of Looking Up Harryette Mullen and The Collected Prose of Bobbie Louise Hawkins. Born in Detroit, Barbara lives in Brooklyn and teaches for Long Island University, as well as writers.com. http://barbarahenning.com

 

Painting Double Flat G by Jenn Zed. Used by Permission. 

#GunViolence: They Took the Guns by Buffy Shutt

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23 ways january colorized

They took the guns.
In one night the children cleaned out
Our closets, our drawers, our lock boxes.
Scoured the police stations and the virtual stores,
Fled like animals, absconding with the action.

None too young or too small
To carry the guns
On their backs, over their heads
Across their forearms, stuffed into waistbands,
Zipped into backpacks, some with dangling charms.

They had badgered us until exhausted,
They turned into animals.
As one, the herd dropped the guns,
Clattering, crisscrossed into a sandy altar.
Littering our shore with dead-shiny obsidian.

Shot hot from a rifle this herd joins
The dragonflies, the turtles, the wildebeests,
The zooplankton swarms.
Heedless of the thousands and thousands of miles ahead
Theirs a desperate gamble.

The children forfeited their human form to start over.
They wait for us, these cagey animals
To surrender, to sacrifice our breath,
To sink forgotten into this riddled hill,
This ash-heap of cruel and casual penalty.

 

 

Buffy Shutt lives and works in Los Angeles. She spent most of her adult life marketing movies. She writes poetry and short stories. She has published one novel and co-authored a book of non-fiction with her college roommate and still best friend. A two time 2017 Pushcart nominee, her recent work has appeared in Red Fez, SplitLip, Bird’s Thumb and the Magnolia Review which gave her their Ink Award.

 

Original photograph by Fibonacci Blue.

#GunViolence: Twenty-Three Ways of Looking at January by Buffy Shutt

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by Fibonacci Blue Buffy Shutt 23 ways January

I bought a gun today and placed
it in the hand of a ninth grader in Kentucky.
A reporter rushing to the school learned
her son was the shooter.

Eleven school shootings, twenty-three
winter days. Cafeteria, parking lot, school bus,
high school, college. Dallas, New Orleans,
Winston-Salem, San Bernardino, Seattle.
We track them—if we do —on the chyron
gliding across our screens with other scores.

My neighbor comes over this morning.
She has miscalculated, needs
a gun for a Nebraska elementary school.
I hand her one before we have our coffee.

 

 

Buffy Shutt lives and works in Los Angeles. She spent most of her adult life marketing movies. She writes poetry and short stories. She has published one novel and co-authored a book of non-fiction with her college roommate and still best friend. A two time 2017 Pushcart nominee, her recent work has appeared in Red Fez, SplitLip, Bird’s Thumb and the Magnolia Review which gave her their Ink Award.

 

Photograph by Fibonacci Blue.

#Immigration; #GunViolence: Two Cherita by Peter Jastermsky

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2 Cheritas Peter Jastermsky photo by Russ

laughing their way
across the grass

a pair of quail

for a moment
we, too, feel at home
in this country

 

 

bullets fly

heads and flags
lower

how little rain
sinks in
before the next storm

 

 

Peter Jastermsky writes Japanese short-form works. His writing has appeared in many journals, including Failed Haiku, Haibun Today, The Cherita, and KYSO Flash. Born in Connecticut, Peter and his family live in Southern California, where he works as a licensed counselor.

 

Original photograph by Russ.

#Immigration #GunViolence: String Ball by Barbara Henning

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e_11___loop_c_by_frogstar_23-d9y7mob.png

for Nevine Michaan and Charles Blow

—the body’s organized—on a square—so says Yogi Nevine—I walk around Tompkins Square—all four corners—surely this is the center—of the universe—the goal in life—should be joy—in Larung Gar—the Chinese—are tearing apart—Tibetan monastic—dwellings—plan your life—like a chess game—move analytically—with intent—it’s very practical—the way to attain joy—even for civilians—trapped in Aleppo—with artillery shelling overhead—defeat in life—is bitterness—buck up—writes Charles Blow—it’s over—the bully’s—in the white house—for the time being—alt-right is not—a computer command—they’re a batch of fanatical racists—if you’re happy—you’ll help everyone—if you’re miserable—you won’t help anyone—in Shuafat—a refugee camp—in Jerusalem—Baha helps the orphans—work, find direction, survive—then a drive-by—ten bullets—one of the children—will surely—take his place—you can follow—fake news sites—from one to another—unravel the molecular structure—of ribosomes—a tangled mess of rubber bands—and coiled wires—a new pattern—of income equality—life expectancy in the US—declines slightly—be careful—it’s like a string ball—if we keep going around—in the same direction—we will surely unravel— (1 Dec 2016)

First published in Rascal.

 

 

Barbara Henning is the author of several collections of poetry, her most recent A Day Like Today (Negative Capability Press 2015). Other recents include A Swift Passage (Quale Press), Cities and Memory (Chax Press) and a collection of object-sonnets, My Autobiography (United Artists). She has published three novels, Thirty Miles to Rosebud, You Me and the Insects and Black Lace, and she is the editor of Looking Up Harryette Mullen and The Collected Prose of Bobbie Louise Hawkins. Born in Detroit, Barbara lives in Brooklyn and teaches for Long Island University, as well as writers.com. http://barbarahenning.com

 

Painting Loop by Jenn Zed. Used by permission.

#GunViolence: At the Movies (Habemus Papam) by Anne Harding Woodworth

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The_Century_16_theater_in_Aurora_CO_-_Shooting_location

It’s a quiet one, We Have a Pope,
the one about the pope
who doesn’t want to be pope.

Quiet, yes—up to the clap of thunder.
The pope’s in for a downpour,
and yet sun radiates over Rome.

*
Turns out the thunder is my own, our own,
in the night sky outside the theatre.
Reality has infiltrated fiction,

the way real and unreal blurred
over the Aurora, Colorado audience,
into a chaos of bodies on the screen

and bodies in the rows and aisles.
Screams, gun blasts, swat teams,
sirens, smoke surged

from behind the scrim and in front of it.
Real blood shone as rose-bright
as any artful wound in a studio.

More thunder. There’s no telling
the difference between what’s out there
and in here. Mindless celluloid holds up.

*
Behold the antihero, as Zeus bombards,
wounds, kills, and shakes walls, sides,
front and rear, seats of velvet,

until no one on earth knows
what projection is, who the holy father is,
and whether we have one or not.

Memorial_outside_Aurora_Century_movie_theater_where_shooting_occurred

 

Anne Harding Woodworth is the author of six books of poetry and four chapbooks. Her most recent chapbook is The Last Gun, an excerpt of which won the COG Poetry Award, judged by A. Van Jordan. It has subsequently been animated and can be seen at http://www.cogzine.com/watch. Harding Woodworth’s poetry, essays, and reviews appear in the U.S. and abroad in print and on line, such as in Poet Lore, TriQuarterly, Crannog, and Innisfree Poetry Journal. She lives in Washington, D.C. where she is a member of the Poetry Board at the Folger Shakespeare Library.

Photographs of scenes following Aurora theater shooting by Algr.

#GunViolence: Sidelines by Buffy Shutt

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filo_kent_state_pulitzer

Sidelines by Buffy Shutt

Buffy Shutt lives and works in Los Angeles. She spent most of her adult life marketing movies. She writes poetry and short stories. She has published one novel and co-authored a book of non-fiction with her college roommate and still best friend. A two time 2017 Pushcart nominee, her recent work has appeared in Red Fez, SplitLip, Bird’s Thumb and the Magnolia Review which gave her their Ink Award.

#GunViolence: Yellow Lines by Anne Harding Woodworth

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Shooting_of_Terence_Crutcher photo by Tulsa Police Dept Yellow Line Anne Woodworth
In memory of Terence Crutcher

He held his arms high toward a sky that had always
cupped him on cold days and warm.
Music lingered inside him tonight
and everything, even the gun,
was going to be fine—he’d done nothing wrong.
Soon he’d be on his way home.

Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck.*

The cop used his taser. The cop used her gun.
The road reached up to the man
who fell, as the asphalt pulled him down
into itself, beside the two yellow lines
that divide and cut off—
it’s one way for some, another
for him who slumped alone under sky.
And the bullet spun in his gut.

Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck.

He’ll never depart this sacred place,
the shirt he wore will remain.
His shoes won’t ever uncobble their stitches,
and he will sing in that street.
The chalk that outlines a shameful truth
will never wash away.

Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck.

*from “Strange Fruit,” lyrics by Abel Meeropol, sung by Billie Holiday

Anne Harding Woodworth is the author of six books of poetry and four chapbooks. Her most recent chapbook is The Last Gun, an excerpt of which won the COG Poetry Award, judged by A. Van Jordan. It has subsequently been animated and can be seen at http://www.cogzine.com/watch. Harding Woodworth’s poetry, essays, and reviews appear in the U.S. and abroad in print and on line, such as in Poet Lore, TriQuarterly, Crannog, and Innisfree Poetry Journal. She lives in Washington, D.C. where she is a member of the Poetry Board at the Folger Shakespeare Library.

 

Aerial photograph of the killing of Terence Crutcher, by Tulsa Police Department.

White Out Three Times by Don Krieger

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Charlottesville torches Don Krieger White Out

After the wedding I puked,
then slept in the bushes. At first light
I drove east, no good bye, the sun
bright as a bomb. By eight

it was snowing. By ten
I was alone running sixty
in the left lane, the others
behind slow trucks or on the shoulder.

This weekend a white boy
drove into the crowd
and killed somebody. Other boys
with credit cards, K-Mart torches,
mommy’s clean muscle shirts, chanted,

You … won’t … erase … us.

First published in Vox Poetica.

 

Don Krieger is a biomedical researcher living in Pittsburgh, PA. His poetry has appeared online at Tuck Magazine, Uppagus Magazine, VerseWrights, and others, in print in Hanging Loose, Neurology, and in English and Farsi in Persian Sugar in English Tea.

Stressed Out by Paul Lojeski

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stressed out paul lojeski by rama

I’m my own murder scene.
One-eyed, bloody-nosed medics,

circle the corpse that is me,
even though I’m smiling and

wink and sing out, how’s it
going boys? But no one answers
including those thick-waisted

trees bending in the screaming
hurricane, nor a gang of cops

scurrying in, smoking, spitting,
grabbing crotches as if there’s
meaning or magic there
instead of mundane menace.

Blue fire at the horizon flares
brighter, as I’m tossed on

the gurney and rolled into the hearse
they claim is an ambulance.

It all makes sense to me, though,
I tell the heavily-armed woman
at checkout of my favorite grocery,

the one selling tins of purified
air guaranteed to extend mortality
by 11% or your money back.
Or more likely your next of kin’s

because you’ll be dead then, but I’m
not, at least, I don’t think I am.

 

 

Paul Lojeski was born and raised in Lakewood, Ohio. He attended Oberlin College. His poetry has appeared online and in print. He lives in Port Jefferson, NY.

 

Photograph by Rama.

#GunViolence: Yoga for Kids by Amy Baskin

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yoga for kids amy baskin walter albertin

Return to child’s pose
and hide under desks.
You’re harder to shoot through walls this way.

Return to child’s pose
and don’t make a peep.
Play “Still as Statues” in the storage closet.

Return to child’s pose.
Place your hands above your heads,
or to the sides of each target— each body. Your bodies.

Return to child’s pose.
Find innocence in your age, your parents, and everyone
who sends you to this building each weekday.

Rest. Recharge. Revive.
Reflect on the circle of things, and above all,
remember to breathe! Quietly, if you can.

 

 

Amy Baskin’s work is currently featured in armarolla, Apparition Lit, Friends Journal, and more. When she’s not writing, she works to ensure that international students at Lewis & Clark College feel welcome and at home during their stay.

 

Photograph by Walter Albertin, 1962. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

#GunViolence: “Silencers Now Legal for Hunting” by Anne Harding Woodworth

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GMan552 Anne Woodworth

“Silencers Now Legal for Hunting”
Charlotte (NC) Observer, August 1, 2013

The task of the poet is “interrogation of silence.”
—George McKay Brown

And so, Silence, what is it you’re hiding
under that sleek and cunning gown?

The gun wears you and you stifle its message.
You do it smugly, Silence, sotto voce.

Still, we know the gun will not be silent—
not until it rusts or jams forever,

not until it drowns in the river or melts
into rake tines for the season.

Are you ready to be stifled, Silence?
Silence wounds. Silence? Can you hear us?

 

 

Anne Harding Woodworth is the author of six books of poetry and four chapbooks. Her most recent chapbook is The Last Gun, an excerpt of which won the COG Poetry Award, judged by A. Van Jordan. It has subsequently been animated and can be seen at http://www.cogzine.com/watch. Harding Woodworth’s poetry, essays, and reviews appear in the U.S. and abroad in print and on line, such as in Poet Lore, TriQuarterly, Crannog, and Innisfree Poetry Journal. She lives in Washington, D.C. where she is a member of the Poetry Board at the Folger Shakespeare Library.

 

Photograph by GMan552.

#GunViolence: Pinned by Linda Imbler

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pinned Linda Imbler Scl chua

Such a game.
Line up the ball with the arrows.
It spins along the lane.
Knock them down.
a spare, a spare,
must try again.
Strike, strike, strike.
Boom, they all fall down.

Line up the ball with the sight.
It spins above the classroom floor.
Knock them down.
A spare, a spare,
spare no one.
Must try again.
Strike, strike, strike.
Boom,
They all
fall
down.

 

First published in Dead Snakes.

 

 

Linda Imbler is the author of the published poetry collections Big Questions, Little Sleep, Lost and Found, and The Sea’s Secret Song. A Kansas-based Pushcart Prize Nominee, her work has been published in numerous national and international journals.  Linda’s creative process and a listing of publications can be found at lindaspoetryblog.blogspot.com.

 

Photograph by Scl chua.

#GunViolence: Solving the Gun Issue by Tamara Madison

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Let’s have a party
and bring all of our guns.

We’ll have contests
to see who can shoot the target

all the way from the living room
to the backyard fence.

We’ll bring our rifles and see
who can shoot the most living things.

We’ll take out our pistols and see
who can draw the fastest.

We’ll shoot at each other’s feet
and call it dancing.

We’ll shoot off our machine guns
and see who finishes their ammo first.

We’ll cover the house with the flag
and practice shooting the stars

Then we’ll turn the guns on each other
— to protect ourselves from the enemy —

and when none of us is left
we’ll declare our country great again.

 

 

Tamara Madison is the author of the chapbook The Belly Remembers, and two full-length volumes of poetry, Wild Domestic and Moraine, all published by Pearl Editions. Her work has appeared in Chiron Review, Your Daily Poem, A Year of Being Here, Nerve Cowboy, the Writer’s Almanac and other publications. She is thrilled to have just retired from teaching English and French in a Los Angeles high school.

#GunViolence: Ellipses by Matt Hohner

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after Van Gogh

He is a change in barometric pressure, a clearing storm in strange light. He is
a missed warning, a settled resolve, a thousand-mile stare across the dinner table. He is a truck parked in a cornfield at dawn, an empty cubicle at work. He is the husband of a classmate, father of teen-agers. He is a childhood friend slicing through the crisp, dry, Colorado autumn wind into a flagstone canyon twenty-five stories below: the echoes of our adolescent laughter; the sound of the wing flaps of his demons carrying him off into the gloaming. He is a famous athlete, lonely inside, broken, down a trail in the woods away from the house, among the dappled shade made softer by his decision.

No one hears the reports, or maybe they do: the wife of a neighbor,
upstairs in their bedroom, jolted by the bluntness of the blast muffled
by mouth and lips, hard palette, back wall of skull. The grating silence
of gunpowder smoke swirling like grit through the air over the scene;
the sound of blood made free by the act, pouring out across the kitchen
floor, warm as him. The taste of iron in the stillness. The sharp, slow burn
of rust as the minutes pass slow as eons before the sirens arrive.

Some will speak of the economy, of marriage problems, of failure
or sickness, of dark secrets only the dead held close. They will speak
of subtle signs and actions, of odd shifts, of the day they missed
the calm resolution as he gave his things away.

The left-behind will not speak of the darkness that followed him to the place
where he stopped running. They will not speak of the gravity of crows,
startled from the trees at the edge of an empty field under gunmetal
clouds, scattering away into the distance—cold, black stars
punctuating the morning horizon like terrible ellipses.

 

 

Matt Hohner, a Baltimore native, holds an M.F.A. in Writing and Poetics from Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. His work has been a finalist for the Ballymaloe International Poetry Prize, taken both third and first prizes in the Maryland Writers Association Poetry Prize, and won the 2016 Oberon Poetry Prize. Hohner’s work has been published individually in numerous journals, including Rattle: Poets Respond, Free State Review, and Crab Orchard Review. His book-length manuscript Thresholds will be published by Apprentice House Press in Fall 2018.

 

Detail of Sower at Sunset by Vincent van Gogh.

#GunViolence: Inside Every Story by Alicia Elkort

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inside every story

I’m telling Paul about the devil look in my pacifist father’s eyes the moment he tells me he wishes he could go back in time & shoot the motherfucker who hurt me, even if he ended up in jail for the rest of his life. Paul tells me he never could understand why Joe, the smartest kid in high school with aspirations for medicine, became a police officer. Until, twenty years later, Joe tells him about sitting in the hallway as a kid holding a shotgun, trying to work up the nerve to shoot his father who’s in his sister’s bedroom, raping her. I’m watching Paul at a quiet joint in Montgomery sipping whiskey, sitting next to Joe drinking soda. The wooden bar is uneven & the stools have no backs, but the air is warm & smooth music drifts through the sound system. Paul is watching Joe in the hallway where the carpet is shab green, the wallpaper peels & the sister’s cries are muffled. There’s some kind of dusty moon leaking light across the back shed & the mother is passed out, an empty bottle of vodka on the floor. Joe is watching his father, night after night, same dark hallway, same shotgun. There’s no redemption in this story. In a few years the sister kills herself & Joe continues to arrest people doing bad shit, hoping one day the story ends with him standing up, opening the door.

 

 

Alicia Elkort edited and contributed to the chapbook Creekside, published under the Berkeley Poetry Review where she also served as an editor. Her poetry has been published in AGNI, Arsenic Lobster, Georgia Review, Heron Tree, Menacing Hedge, Rogue Agent, Stirring: A Literary Collection, Tinderbox Poetry Journal and many others and is forthcoming in Black Lawrence Press. Alicia’s poems have been nominated for the Orisons Anthology (2016) and the Pushcart (2017). She lives in California and will go to great lengths for an honest cup of black tea and a cool breeze.

 

First published in The Hunger.

#MeToo; #GunViolence: Sara by Karen Silverstrim

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She opened the door to the end. She could hear her son
splashing in the tub down the hall. She could see the intent
in his eyes, and she only thought, “hush” to her son.
“Don’t let him hear you.” She backed away from the door
and the gun, trying to placate, offering to talk. He had already
made up his mind though, the standard, “if I can’t have you,
no one will.” The shots rang out and stung her face like a bee,
as part of her jaw flew across the room. The end was quick,
but her final thought was her son. She didn’t close her eyes,
until she saw him turn the gun on himself. Her son would be safe.

 

 

Karen Silverstrim lives in western New York, spending her time hiking around the Niagara Gorge and teaching history.  Karen has been writing for forty-seven years, with publications in newspapers and literary journals in New York, North Carolina, Arkansas, and Canada.

 

Photograph by Ian D. Keating. 

#GunViolence: Two Poems by Lennart Lundh

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June 2015, and Others

Gunshots don’t ring out.
Freedom rings. Coronets.
The voices of Sabbath choirs,
table graces, children at play:
These, I will agree, ring out.

Gunshots explode. Thunder.
Sunder flesh from blood.
Echo down the halls of ages
as they remind us of loss
in every firecracker overheard.

Gunshots salute. Pay semi-holy
tribute to Our victory over Them,
to more of Them dying than Us,
whether the war is institutional,
or against our individual targets.

12 June 2016: Again We Get It Wrong

Yesterday’s heat has given way to moderation, and I’m out front, down on my old, stiff hands and thick, aching knees, tending the varied wealth of our flower beds. Last year’s rose of Sharon volunteers need cleaning out, before they root so deep I’ll need a spade and back brace. Or maybe dynamite. There are days I’m almost frustrated enough to blow the place up and down and start over. Don’t worry. Ain’t gonna’ happen. I know better than to do that. But I swear this process will take forever. Meanwhile, it’s five days before the first anniversary of Charleston, and down in Orlando the clean-up crews aren’t even starting to get ready. The crime scene will take a week of forevers to process. A score dead, two score wounded, somebody with a score to settle. When they get fed up enough with whatever they’re personally, self-righteously fed up with, some folks just want the sound of gunfire to start over, to raise their spirits up and strike the others down. Why does the wrongness of this take forever for us to process?

Hopscotch_in_schoolyard author Jeremy Tarling

 

Lennart Lundh is a poet, short-fictionist, historian, and photographer. His work has appeared internationally since 1965.

 

Photographs: Students folding flag at end of the day, Central High School in Little Rock by Adam Jones; Hopscotch in school yard by Jeremy Tarling. 

#GunViolence: Turning Back the Clock by Matt Hohner

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Eternal_clock

1.

We turn back the clock, surrender ourselves to the thudding
darkness, drag the cold sun out of its murky prison cell, scudding
lower across the sky by mere measurement. Daylight skews.
Are the scorched shadows of Nagasaki back in the news?
Is it August 1945, or is it Pyongyang, 2017? Oligarchs charm
the devil in designer suits, rattle radioactive warheads like bones
in a cup, tossing their isotopic nightmare I-Ching across farm
fields, oceans, and boardrooms, cashing out before Armageddon
with polished monuments ready for new names to prepay Charon
while we dope-step blindly into history, our eyes fused to our phones.

2.

The land shapeshifts under our feet. Time becomes a loop;
Is this Sand Creek, Colorado, 1864? Arapaho and Cheyenne
villagers and U.S. army cannons? Such glorious troops.
Is it Wounded Knee, 1890? No, this is Sandy Hook, Newtown,
Connecticut, 2012. The Indians are children. No. Look again:
it’s Columbine High School, 1999. The Indians are children,
the cowboys are children, and guns are still the weapons.
No. Fast-forward: Las Vegas, October 2017. The man
is not Crazy Horse or Leonard Peltier with a list of demands,
but a lone wolf on a losing streak in a hotel tower, raining down
bullets into twenty-thousand cowboys. A war rages in his head.
The blood congealing in an open field pools red.

3.

The calendar flips backwards through years, tired epochs,
time’s grim course sweeping across Charleston and Antioch,
21st Century, past Memphis, April 1968, circling and spinning
back to Birmingham, September 1963, Indiana, 1930. A grinning
crowd gathers to pose for pictures around the mangled sun
hanging low from a tree. But the clock says it is Sunday in
America, November 2017, rural Texas: parishioners
in their sacred hour kneel to muzzle flashes and perish.
Supplication, execution: here is the church, here is the steeple;
open the doors and kill all the people.

 

 

Matt Hohner, a Baltimore native, holds an M.F.A. in Writing and Poetics from Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. His work has been a finalist for the Ballymaloe International Poetry Prize, taken both third and first prizes in the Maryland Writers Association Poetry Prize, and won the 2016 Oberon Poetry Prize. Hohner’s work has been published individually in numerous journals, including Rattle: Poets Respond, Free State Review, and Crab Orchard Review. His book-length manuscript Thresholds will be published by Apprentice House Press in Fall 2018.

 

Eternal Clock photograph by Robert van der Steeg. 

 

#GunViolence: Revelatory by Ken Allan Dronsfield

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In this world of heartless consumption
waste of human life to the whipsaw;
children shot dead while at recess
never did so little mean so much
then when two deer in a field
saw you and you saw them
nothing else mattered…
as neither blinked…

 

 

Ken Allan Dronsfield is a disabled veteran, poet and fabulist originally from New Hampshire, now residing on the plains of Oklahoma. His work can be found in magazines, journals, reviews and anthologies. He has two poetry collections. The Cellaring is a book of 80 poems of light horror, paranormal, weird and wonderfully odd work. His newest book, A Taint of Pity, Life Poems Written with a Cracked Inflection, was just released on Amazon.com. He is a three time Pushcart Prize and twice Best of the Net Nominee for 2016-2017. Ken loves writing, thunderstorms, walking in the woods at night and spending time with his cats Willa and Yumpy.

 

Photograph by Mucki.

#GunViolence: Maracay by Janette Schafer

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The Venezuela of my youth
had a cement washtub,
Abuela’s hands washing away
the heat of equatorial afternoon,

flashed a decadent Carnival
and I, a shy child with
thin hair, waved at the parade
in my clown costume,

joyed at the donkey piñata
at my sister’s first birthday,
children spun and spun
until they missed their mark and fell.

Today in Venezuela, raspy voiced
men walk the streets of Maracay,
rest their hands idly on assault weapons,
load poems into my quaking heart.

 

 

Janette Schafer is a freelance writer, nature photographer, former opera singer, and full-time banker living in Pittsburgh PA. She was a 2017 awardee of the Maenad Fellowship through Chatham University. Her poems and photographs have recently been included in the following: Unlikely Stories V, Event Horizons, Dear America, Reflections on Race, Nasty Women & Bad Hombres Anthology, and Anti Heroin Chic.

 

Photograph by Diosean.

#GunViolence: Reverse Bachata by Matt Hohner

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Latin Night, Pulse Nightclub, Orlando, Florida, June 12, 2016

The blood sucks back from the dance floor into his
mouth, into his nose, his body uncrumples and he stands,
the round stops bouncing around inside his cranium,
stops turning his brain to jelly, gray matter pulls and folds
back neatly into his skull through his cheek, skin closing
behind the bullet it as it leaves him, backs through a woman’s
shoulder blade and out of her chest, so fast now, spinning back
into the barrel of the man’s AR-15, explosion of gunpowder
re-condensing as the firing mechanism eases away from the
round, trigger moves forward, finger relaxes, and he walks
backward out of the club into the darkness, opens his trunk,
slides his gun back into its case, un-parks his car and returns
home, walks backward from his car to his apartment door,
slips quietly back into bed, time reverses faster, the sun
unsets for a do-over, he grabs his Quran instead of his gun,
reads Mohammad’s verses on tolerance and grace, his pain
lifting like an azan, calls his father to tell him something he won’t
want to hear, but must, because the sound of a father weeping
for a son who has accepted himself is preferable to the sound
of forty-nine others’ loved ones weeping because their sons
and daughters are now dead, and won’t be coming home
late after dancing the night away at the club ever again.

 

 

Matt Hohner, a Baltimore native, holds an M.F.A. in Writing and Poetics from Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. His work has been a finalist for the Ballymaloe International Poetry Prize, taken both third and first prizes in the Maryland Writers Association Poetry Prize, and won the 2016 Oberon Poetry Prize. Hohner’s work has been published individually in numerous journals, including Rattle: Poets Respond, Free State Review, and Crab Orchard Review. His book-length manuscript Thresholds will be published by Apprentice House Press in Fall 2018.

 

Photograph by Orlando Police Department.

#GunViolence: Valentine’s Day by Beth Gordon

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I was drinking mildewed wine while the bartender
sliced winter lemons.  Blood oranges and Key
West limes as bright as hungry frogs.

He changed the channel from slaughtered
students to coyote documentaries to digital
Korean snow. To children who always

knew they would be famous throwing
their beautiful bodies into the sky with nothing
but fiberglass and the breath of red-throated

loons to soften their choreographed landing.
He brought me a plate. He brought me
poblanos bursting with garlic and thyme.

He brought me a new glass of wine
because I live that kind of life. I wanted to wade
with the dead in muddy river water and fill

the new holes in their beautiful bodies
with rosemary.  With snow white lilies
and melted wax. There is not enough time

in frozen daylight to shed every necessary
tear and you ask me about love poems
but I give you this. I give you this funeral.
I give you this funeral song.

Valentine's Day into sky

Beth Gordon is a writer who has been landlocked in St. Louis, Missouri for sixteen years but dreams of oceans daily. Her work has recently appeared in Into the Void, Quail Bell, Calamus Journal, By&By, Five:2:One, Barzakh, and others. She can be found on Twitter @bethgordonpoet.

 

Featured photo of Sligo, Ireland statue to honor those lost at sea by Shay Sevenfold.

“Throwing their beautiful bodies into the sky” photo by Cat. 

Identification In Belfast By Robert Lowell

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(I.R.A. Bombing)

The British Army now carries two rifles,
one with rubber rabbit-pellets for children,
the other’s of course for the Provisionals….
‘When they first showed me the boy, I thought oh good,
it’s not him because he’s blonde
I imagine his hair was singed dark by the bomb.
He had nothing on him to identify him,
except this box of joke trick matches;
he liked to have them on him, even at mass.
The police were unhurried and wonderful,
they let me go on trying to strike a match…
I just wouldn’t stop you cling to anything
I couldn’t believe I couldn’t light one match
only joke matches… Then I knew he was Richard.’

 

(Robert Lowell 1917-1977.)

#GunViolence: Fish by Paul Lojeski

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The man behind the fish counter
weighed out a half-pound of Fluke,
wrapped it, handed it over and said,
Anything else? I wanted to ask him

about the latest shootings but knew
he was strapped to the same machine
I was (flames and sparks shooting
out around his body, halos of gold

and silver stars). That’ll do it. Thanks,
I said. And because we were familiar
to each other, we smiled and nodded.
I put the fish in my green basket and

walked away, feeling the bindings
tighten slightly, heat increasing,
thinking, this is all wrong. Every bit
of it. Then I saw the wave of sparks.

 

 

Paul Lojeski was born and raised in Lakewood, Ohio, and he attended Oberlin College. His poetry has appeared online and in print. He lives in Port Jefferson, NY.

#GunViolence: Columbine by Dana Bloomfield

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I experience this through John.
My widower friend enters my office,
back from his coffee break
with breaking news
that fifteen lay dead in a Colorado school.
Hostages, bombs, mountains, columbine.
I let his face tremble
and his voice sway dizzy, heavy wonder.
I am his quiet anchor, How tragic…
Columbine High School.

Yesterday, radio rhetoric argued
that American education doesn’t prepare
children for the global marketplace.
Glazed-over American eyes turn away
from Kosovo’s blue light hum
to tremble, sway dizzy,
learn late what it’s about.
I survive this onslaught.
I have John for a human shield.

 

Dana Bloomfield is a retired preschool teacher. Her poems have appeared in Baltimore Review, Digges’ Choice, Baltimore Women’s Times, Green Revolution, and the anthology Grease and Tears.