Guidelines



Submission Guidelines: Send unpublished poems in the body of an email (NO ATTACHMENTS) to nvneditor[at]gmail.com. No simultaneous submissions. Use "Verse News Submission" as the subject line. Send a brief bio. No payment. Authors retain all rights after 1st-time appearance here. Scroll down the right sidebar for the fine print.

Sunday, April 11, 2021

ECHOES OF MERCY, WHISPERS OF LOVE

by Earl J. Wilcox




In a back room of the home nestled

among pines and dogwoods—bam bam

 

bam—shots over and over, bullets 

felling grandfather, grandmother, 

 

two grandchildren. The fescue lawn 

shaded but ready for a Carolina summer 

 

held in its red clay care two others hit 

by the bam bam bam bullets. Echoes

 

from silenced beautiful lives fill 

the patient pines. The ER will not 

 

receive nor save these lives or

the shooter’s. Nothing in this world

 

can soothe the pain in the hearts

of those of us left behind, our faces

 

racked with tears and fears for 

a world where—over and over and

 

over—guns break the silence among

hollow pine trees, our consolation

 

in each other, hopeful that one day

a brave new world answers our prayers.


 

Earl Wilcox is a friend both of the family of those killed in Rock Hill, SC on April 7 and of the family of the alleged shooter.