by Margaret Gannon
Dedicated to poet journalist Ron Riekki who has covered all of Michigan’s mass shootings for The New Verse News since July 2025.
Each time the news repeats
a scene of rampage, of chaos
among folks who only yesterday
went to the market
for eggs or cigarettes.
Each time the news zooms in on
someone else’s pavement smeared
with blood and worse;
someone else’s daytime shattered,
nighttime exploded.
Each time the news serves breakfast
with jelly spread on toast and
coffee spilled a bit on the table
by the digital screen showing
a picture of a police car.
Each time, one by one, the news
forgets yesterday’s message
and last week’s, twice, and doesn’t
remember last month’s and then
again, again.
Each time, the news reports
the reason, the explanation,
the context that says
human nature is the trigger.
If the news arrived with a face
that had looked and looked
at all the sameness of death —
the vacant lot, the corner store,
the porch, the schoolyard,
the bar, the beauty shop,
the man, the men, the boys,
the singular girl,
the shooters, the victims,
their mothers, the neighbors
all stunned in deadly experience —
each time asking why
that despairing human being
had a gun,
would the answer be like the kid
to the cop in The Wire:
“Got to. This America, Man.”?
Margaret Gannon is an attorney retired from representing women in Bay Area courts for 50 years.
