HE ARRIVED JUST IN THE NICOTINE

by Steven Kent

Source: Artlyst

"David Hockney's lifelong love of smoking—and the 2,000 cigarettes he kept 'for emergencies'" —The Guardian, June 13, 2026

The docs predicted early death each time they made their rounds,

But he outlived 'em one by one—the irony abounds.

How did it take so long for David Hockney to expire?

No matter: Still his spirit lives, for where there's smoke there's fire.

Steven Kent is the poetic alter ego of writer and musician Kent Burnside. His work appears in 251, Asses of Parnassus, The Dirigible Balloon, Light, Lighten Up Online, The Lyric, New Verse News, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Philosophy Now, The Pierian, Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, The Road Not Taken: A Journal of Formal Poetry, Snakeskin, and Well Read. His collections I Tried (And Other Poems, Too) (2023) and Home at Last (2025) are published by Kelsay Books. 

RAINBOW COAT

by Irene Axel

President Donald Trump’s executive order, issued on his first day of the second term, made it official policy: transgender, nonbinary, and intersex identities would no longer be recognized by the federal government. And, in turn, federal agencies started removing the questions that once measured SOGI [Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity] characteristics across approximately 360 data collections. —Instinct, February 19, 2026

A newbie gay sitting in my office

and the intake form said ???

next to sexually active

Girl, I see you.

And when she says I'm here for birth control

I whip out my rainbow pen to take notes and say

my usual normalizing speech

about the benefits of BC past preventing pregnancy

and we settle on a good plan to get to

NO MORE PERIODS

and when she starts to get up I say

hang on my dear what about a pap smear

you are 21 and due

and they say... but I'm well you know???

and I say—gently—aware of the white coat

covering my pride tattoo

you still need cervical cancer screening

and they shuffle their feet and bolt with a

KTHXBYE to go pick up their pills

but at least they were in my office

and now—we won't even know—

how many newbie gays

think they don't need

a gynecologist

when everyone with a cervix

needs the right

rainbow

gynecologist

Author's note: The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology cannot tell you how the rate of cervical cancer differs in the queer versus the straight population because they do not have enough data, but the ACOG does say that the risk factors for cervical cancer are more prevalent in LGBTQ patients and that ongoing research is needed. In addition, of course, LGBTQ patients may face significant obstacles in getting acreening—particularly transmen who may have a cervix and may not feel comfortable going to a gyn office to get a pelvic exam or pap smear. How are we in the field supposed to understand this underscreened population when federal policy works to obscure them?

Irene Axel is a queer OBGYN and a poet based in California. Her work has appeared in One Art: A Journal of Poetry.

TIDY UP

by Peter A. Witt

Nobody can predict how the 48 teams will do at the FIFA World Cup this summer, but if you wanted to gamble on Japan being the tidiest team, you’d surely clean up at the bookies. Thanks to a societal expectation of all Japanese people, you’d never know they were there. —CNN, June 14, 2026

The final whistle echoes across the Dallas pitch,
and the stadium slowly drains,
leaving behind the usual modern tax of celebration:
a landscape of crushed plastic, discarded cups,
and the torn remnants of a stadium afternoon.
Most of us walk away,
assuming the mess belongs to the stadium,
or the city, or anyone but ourselves.

But then, the blue jerseys of the Japanese faithful emerge,
not moving toward the exits,
but walking down the rows.
They carry large, simple trash bags,
bending to collect the garbage left by strangers.
There are no television cameras forcing their hand,
no rewards promised at the gates.

They call it tatsu tori ato wo nigosazu, 
"the bird that flies away leaves the water unstirred."

It is a quiet philosophy woven into the fabric of a childhood,
where classrooms are swept by the students who occupy them,
and responsibility is not a chore,
but a form of respect for the space we share.

It makes you stop and look at the row you just vacated.
Why must we always leave a scar on the places we visit?
Why do we treat the shared world as a landfill managed by someone else?

Imagine a culture where accountability isn't outsourced,
where we take pride not just in the win,
but in the condition of the ground beneath our feet.
To leave a place cleaner than we found it
not for the praise, but simply because we were there.

Peter A. Witt by chance lives in Texas and is a recovering university professor who lost his adjectives in the doldrums of academic writing. Poetry has helped him recover his ability to see and describe the inner and outer world he inhabits. His work has been twice nominated for the Best of the Net award and has appeared in a variety of online and print publications. He also writes family history.  His book about his aunt was published by the Texas A&M University Press (Edith's War: Writings of a Red Cross Worker and Lifelong Champion of Social Justice). He is also an avid birder and wildlife photographer.

MASS SHOOTING #16

19300 block of Rensellor Street, Livonia, MI, 

June 10, 2026

by Ron Riekki

Ron Riekki has covered every mass shooting in Michigan since July 2025 for The New Verse News.

The Detroit Wayne Integrated Health Network offers a 24-hourhelpline at 1-800241-4949.

And those in a mental health crisis can call 988 intead if 911.

“With my ear to the door

of my cell.  And my want

like a comb in my hair.”

—Jane Huffman,

“Failed Sestina”

 

“I’m sure as heat,

as surety.

The bleed”

—Jane Huffman,

“Surety”

 

“Police say there is no ongoing threat to the public.”

Are you kidding me?  Michigan has had more than

100 mass shootings since 2020.  You don’t think it’s

an ongoing threat?!  I can’t imagine a more ongoing

 

threat to the public.  It’s another family annihilation.

Yes, another family annihilation.  Another.  Another

family.  Another family annihilated.  Anti-Christed,

hated, non-mothered, to not, knotted, no other Tues-

 

days, shooter unsteady.  When you search “Livonia”

on the Poetry Foundation website, it says “0 results.”

When you search “Livonia” on the Gun Violence

Archive website, you get 31 results since 2014—

 

31 shootings here since 2014.  Only one of them a mass

shooting.  I’m at the mass shooting.  The house, small.

The houses nearby, small.  A small man sits on a small

porch, a tiny porch, broken wooden rails, his skin also

 

broken so that I ask what’s wrong, bandages on both

arms, the look like previous bleeding, bruises, purpura,

petechiae.  The feel of peripeteia, bathos, pathos, cath-

arsis, anagnorisis, a chorus of country music cranked

 

in some a--holes truck parked mid-street, blocking traffic,

the guy getting out, going to the memorial in front of

the house, standing there, staring at it, has enough, goes

back to his truck and then squeals the tires loooong with

 

the truck in park, attention-seeking, angry, this hyper-mask,

this loudness, this performativity, and then he floors it,

truck swerving, almost hitting cars on the side of the road,

and he’s gone.  I talk to Doug, a neighbor two doors down

 

from the mass shooting.  So many of these guys who live

near the mass shootings I go to look like pirates—sea-salt

skin, Blackbeard-types with white beards, beer-belly skinny.

Doug tells me his last name and, swear to God, he actually

 

has the same last name as a famous pirate, a 1600s buccaneer.

He smokes, looking like a survivor, tells me that on Tuesday,

the day of the mass murders, he was in the backyard with

the family that was killed, helping them set up a pool.  I say,

 

“A pool.  And then it becomes a pool of blood.”  Doug says

in a voice that combines hip-hop’s Drake and outlaw pirate

Sir Francis Drake, “I should kick you in the shins.”  He’s not

joking.  He tells me of seeing the corpse of the mother killed

 

by the shooter, tells me the shooting happened at 5 p.m.-some-

thing, but the bodies weren’t taken out until 11:30 p.m.-ish.

Why would they leave the bodies there for that long?

Fingerprints, detectives, a cop telling him, “This is a crime

 

scene,” Doug staying on his property.  And the cop cars.

Cop car after cop car.  No place to park.  He points to a car

on the street, says, “That’s Sterling’s car.”  58-year-old.

The father.  Shot and killed by his son who shot his mother,

 

his brother, and his brother’s girlfriend.  Doug tells me that

they’re slowly towing their cars away.  I never thought of

the cars.  How the owners are all dead.  Something I’d never

even think of.  He tells me how long it took them to take

 

the bodies away, how long it’s taking them to tow the cars.

Doug wears an ALICE’S RESTAURANT WOODSIDE

CALIFORNIA T-shirt, black-and-white.  It’s a black-and-

white neighborhood.  The shooter, white.  Family, white.

 

All dead.  The killer looking dead in news video footage of

him in front of the judge who denied him bail.  A face that,

honestly, the first time I saw it, I thought of severe substance

abuse disorder.  A face that made me think of abuse, and of

 

disorder.  Doug pulls his shirt out like pro basketball players

do after scoring a critical basket, says, “Guthrie,” proud,

a song about cops, about crime, the longest song I’ve ever

heard.  Doug tells me of his wife calling him, telling him

 

she heard gunshots.  Doug telling her to hide in the bath-

tub if it continues.  The song has the lyrics of kill kill kill

kill.  Such strange lyrics.  Such a strange life.  Telling your

wife to hide in a bathtub if the gunshots continue.  Doug

 

tells me the mass shooter “didn’t talk much,” was “quiet,”

but “I’d joke with him every once in a while,” like yelling

at him to “buy me a Slurpee!”  Doug tells me the mother

planted flowers.  It’s the exact same talk as the last family

 

annihilation I went to, the neighbor in Grand Rapids telling

me about the woman’s love of gardening.  These mass

shooters are killing women who love to garden.  I can’t

imagine anything more peaceful, more grounded, paired

 

with such horror.  This life makes no sense, because of all

the death.  That pairing.  Doug says, it “seemed like a normal

day,” the day of the mass murders.  He tells me no bullets

came towards his home.  The killer used a semiautomatic

 

rifle, shoots five to thirty rounds with up to five bullets per

second.  You can kill five people in one second with a semi-

automatic rifle.  Who would own that?  Online, it says semi-

automatic rifles are for “hunting, sport shooting, self-defense,”

 

and, apparently, for mass shootings.  They forget to mention it.

I’m going to be honest: Fuck the NRA.  That’s my one

curse word I’ll allow.  The three-letter curse word: NRA.

The nonrandomness of these shootings, how repetitive

 

they are, automatic, unraveling daily, nonrational, enraging,

the pain they cause unratable.  Sunrays hit the house, punch

our skin.  Doug tells me he’s on blood-thinners, the reason

for his contusions, his arms covered in red, blue, purple,

 

green, yellow discolorations.  Semiautomatic rifles were

invented by a German, were used by the Nazis in WWII.

The killer’s last name is Pierce: to make a hole or opening

in.  Perforate.  Penetrate.  The penitentiary awaits.

 

I remember when I worked in the prison system, an inmate

in there who was doing back-to-back-to-back life sentences—

he would have to die, get resurrected, die again, resurrect,

and then die again, and then he could get out on his fourth

 

life.  I think of the 1.7 million men in prison in the U.S.

The prison system is hungry for angry men.  Its stomach

aches for angry men.  It’s “nearly impossible” for men

to get into therapy—the cost, the therapists who work

 

Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and don’t

realize that’s when people work, that they can’t go to

therapy if you schedule your hours for when they work,

the therapists who “refuse to see men,” the stigma, markets

 

of anger, the MMA marketing, the UFC marketing, WWE,

the road-rage retaliation that’s stuffed into men’s brains, how

boring it is, how polluted.  Doug tells me the shooter killed

his brother in his bedroom, his brother’s girlfriend the same

 

bedroom, killed his parents in their backyard, Doug realizing

the mother was dead because she’d “been there for an hour

and a half,” lying there, motionless, when he saw her, the body

in the sun, the body “on the patio.”  Doug tells me “Tuesday

 

night, I prayed and cried and cried and prayed,” that he “did

not sleep well.”  He tells me it took “two days” for their “cat

to come out of the basement.”  The shooter even shot one

of the dogs in the leg.  Doug says, “I didn’t know he got

 

any guns in the house.”  I ask Doug if he has a gun.  “No,

my wife won’t let me.”  I ask him if his wife won’t let him

because so many guns, I find, are used to kill the partner.

It seems there’s nothing safer than ensuring there are no

 

guns at all in a home.  I talked to a therapist who told me

that gun ownership is a sign of mental health disorder,

another therapist who told me how often you find that

those with substance use disorders are gun owners, as if

 

they go hand-in-hand.  If I was married to someone, I think

the first thing I’d do is throw out any guns in the home,

because I’d prefer not to be shot.  But that’s just me.

I want to tell Doug that his wife is smart, brilliant.

 

I ask Doug what needs to happen to improve things.  He says,

“The yahoo in the White House, he doesn’t do anything

about gun control,” adds, “I don’t even like saying his name.”

Doug tells me he’d own a gun though, if it wasn’t for his wife.

 

Why?  “Protection.”  He says the problem is “alpha males,

macho males,” says the answer is if we “cut the trigger finger

off” of these mass shooters, takes his free hand and acts like

he’s holding a saw, his finger sticking out, pretending he’s

 

invisibly sawing off his finger, adds, “background checks”

would help.  I tell him the mass shooter had no criminal

background, no reported mental health issues.  At least

that’s what the news reports.  I see a neighbor pull up,

 

lives in the house right next to the mass shooting.  I go

over.  The guy reminds me of Ichabod Crane, how I

imagined him when I read the story.  He’s nervous,

visibly, very.  We talk.  He’s guarded.  A full family

 

was murdered feet from where we’re standing.  Even

his dog in the window looks scared.  I say this to him.

I asked if he talked to the shooter.  Yes.  I ask what

he was like.  He starts to tell me, then backtracks.

 

He’s jittery.  He tells me not to put that, tells me

to put he was “nice,” that the mass shooter was

always “nice.”  He repeats the word “nice.”  He

doesn’t want me to put what he was originally

 

going to say, except I don’t know what he was

going to originally say, just that now he wants me

to put that the killer was “nice,” and I have this

revelation—all these times I’ve seen the news

 

where neighbors, friends, family of the mass

murderer gets asked to describe the killer, they

always say something like that, that he was “nice”

and I realize now, for the first time, that it’s B.S.

 

He’s saying the killer was nice, because he’s nervous,

noticeably, almost exaggeratedly, a definite PTSD, eyes

darting, restless.  He doesn’t want me putting anything

down that might make the killer pissed off, a killer who,

 

I remind him, will most likely be doing life in prison

with no parole.  He tells me his name, but I tell him

I can use a nickname, but he says, no, I can use his

name, but I won’t, simply because of all sixteen mass

 

shootings I’ve gone to, I can tell he’s really honestly

fearing for his life from this guy who’ll probably be

incarcerated forever, but I understand.  It’s right next

to his home, his dog in the window, anxious for him

 

to go inside, his dog having heard the gunshots.  Can

dogs have PTSD?  Hell yes.  My parents owned a rescue

dog and that thing was more hypervigilant than an ex-

Marine.  I walk over to the memorial in front of the house.

 

I notice the neighbor watching me.  He mentioned that

he’s in therapy.  I think, Good.  I wish more men would

get into therapy.  I wish more men weren’t seduced by

the small-penis pseudo-cure of gun ownership.  I wish

 

more men were actually like Ichabod Crane and less

Headless Horseman—brainless, violent, ghoulish; I think

of the Hell that awaits the mass murderer, what happens

in prison, the sons in there, the poison of prison, the way

 

you pay and pay and pay and pay, an inmate one time

telling me that he taped books to his chest when he slept

at night, worried about being stabbed in his sleep, another

inmate telling me he didn’t go to the chapel because so

 

many men were raped in there, and I remember this row

of toilets, toilet after toilet after toilet that you’d see

through the glass, on the way with the walk to the chapel

and how all these men would be sitting, shitting, in full

 

sight, no privacy, and the chapel in back, a guard taking me,

and this intricate Jesus Christ depiction, incredible, detailed,

even expensive looking, carved, careful, Jesus with so much

blood on his wrists.  So much.  I kept staring at all the blood.

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