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Monday, August 04, 2025

MASS SHOOTING #2



by Ron Riekki




“Dandelions bare art of

endurance”

—Semaj Brown, 

First Poet Laureate of Flint, Michigan,



            i

 

4 injured, 1 killed, across from a church surrounded by endless fence and on the other side of the fence    concrete           and on the other side of the church more concrete  with piles of rubble fenced off and empty parking spots overgrown with crushed weeds and church windows you can’t see into and           120 air quality Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups        and a NOTICE WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR VEHICLES OR PERSONAL ITEMS on the wall of the building that’s painted pure black jet black onyx black charcoal black the entire building black    and the white-silver moon in the sky cut in half   in the smog sky           and crickets crickets crickets mixed with distant traffic and  the losing wind            and the wall is black every bit of it black with black wall and black garbage can with a full black plastic bag and a big black bucket near the painted black front door with thick white-silver locks thick locks and a gated door and no one to ask questions to nobody no bodies nothing just crickets and clouds and lights of the church and distant loud-soft traffic and a train warns its arrival somewhere on the horizon green overtaking the white-silver concrete and a telephone wire swings in the wind lazily and someone was killed here right here  a long thin orange construction cone leans against the fence like it’s having a smoke            and the wind and the crickets and there is no one anywhere and you feel the sin of corporate decay and the sick concrete clouds and the desperate crickets

 

 

            ii

 

down the street an absolutely massive sign for LEGACY FUNERAL CHAPEL

 

 

            iii

 

and before leaving

 

a security guard

alone

in a white car

on the other side

 

of a fence

 

and I pull over

and I walk up

to the fence

and he gets out

 

and walks up

 

to the fence

and we talk

through the fence

and he’s in white-

 

silver uniform

 

and he’s white

and it’s a black

neighborhood

and he’s white

 

and I ask him

 

if he knows

about the mass

shooting

and he says,

 

“I can’t speak

 

to any journalists

or lawyers”

and I tell him

I’m not trying

 

to solve a murder.

 

I’m trying to

solve Murder.

I don’t say that.

I think that.

 

I’m trying to

 

understand

why there’s so

much violence.

I say that.

 

I tell him

 

he doesn’t have

to talk about

the murder,

but can just talk

 

about how we

 

lessen the violence,

as a human,

how do we lessen

the violence

 

and he says,

 

“I’m not allowed

to comment”

and he’s robotic

and white and

 

I tell him how

 

when I’ve talked

with white people

in the black neighbor-

hoods where

 

the shootings

 

are taking place,

the white people

are corporate

and tell me

 

they’re corporate

 

and tell me

they can’t speak,

that I need to speak

to the police,

 

and I tell him

 

that the black people

I talk with

talk

because

 

they’re invested

 

in helping their

community

and I ask him

if the white people

 

who are corporate

 

aren’t invested

in black communities

and so that’s why

they have nothing

 

to say

 

and he walks away

silently

and gets in his

white security

 

vehicle

 

and drives away

and he is protecting—

seriously?—

what looks like

 

a thousand white

 

vans

all in rows

in a fenced in

parking lot,

 

all of these

 

white white white

vans, a comical

amount of white

vans

 

that he’s protecting,

 

and he fades away

into the night

and I look at him

fading

 

through the fence

 

that seems to be

everywhere

and how it protects

nothing



Ron Riekki co-edited Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice.