SHOOTER

by Stan Pisle

@Walt_Handelsman

Shooter 

Reported in Florida…

Forget how many times. 

An involuntary pulse throbbing 

in the dark, in the light,

Our schools, our arenas, our malls, courts, playgrounds, homes. 

 

A shooter took the life four cops in Oakland, 

five in Dallas, 

two in New York, 

26 people at a Sutherland Springs Church 

Nine in Charleston

58 in Las Vegas

—with 851 shot. 

Eight hundred and fifty-one people shot by one man. 

The numbers grow too much for a poem.

Stop 

Telling us life stories of the dead.

Window dressing over crackles of bullets.

Building fences between shooters and the shot.

NPRing, obits of people murdered for mercantile. 

Attempting animal warmth on cold dead bodies piled up.

Dividing and parsing the pile, determining which shot member counts. 

 

Show

Bullet riddled heads.

Emmette Till open coffin the funerals.

Zoom in where the casing entered under the nose, ejecting the soul.

Fuck that, assault rifle hollow points facture on contact.

Nothing’s left, only pulverized.

Narrate the blood cone spurting across theaters, schools, country music festivals.

Interview the bump stocked woman baren from five shells raping her womb. 

Collect the pools of bone and hamburger from the 100,000 shot each year.

Let gravity channel it to the twits and fat bros of Fox.

To the manufacturer of the hollow points 

Let them wipe up the fragments flowing in a bath the rest of us are forced to take.  

Stan Pisle is a Berkeley California poet. His work as appeared in the Arroyo Magazine, on KQED San Francisco, The Ravens Perch, and The New Verse News. 

CALLING THE ROLL

by Pamela L. Sumners

'Black lives don't matter,' lawyer says after jury awards $4 in police killing. —CNN, June 1, 2018. According to Lawyer John M. Phillips, Greg Hill “opened and closed his garage door deescalating the situation. Police shot through his closed garage door.” —CBS, June 1, 2018. Photo at the gofundme designed to provide for Greg Hill’s children.

Let me be the curator on the day
In the long hot summer
When all hell breaks loose.
Someone needs to be in charge.

Ferguson!  Hands up or I’ll shoot.
Don’t think I won’t do it, either.
Charleston!  Stop crying.
You put that thing down right now
Or I’ll give you something to cry about.

San Bernardino, you’re in time out.
Go to your mat.  Baton Rouge!
Redstick—go get me your switch.
Orlando, I told you you’d get burned
If you touched that.  I told you
A burned child dreads the fire.

All of you!  Back up.  Get down.
Show of hands.  Show me your hands.
Keep everything where I can see it.
Dallas—Dallas, now what did I tell you
About parade routes and snipers?

Pay attention.  Listen.  Settle down,
All of you.  Use your indoor voice
But use your words.  You have to
Use your words.  Meantime, what
We need—are you listening to me?
is a little
order
here . . .

Pamela L. Sumners is a civil rights and constitutional lawyer who writes poems. She lives in St. Louis with her wife, teenage kid, several dogs, and unwanted mice.

THE HOMOPHILOUS GENE

by James Penha

“You’ll see people complaining that the media doesn’t give as much prominence to terrorism atrocities outside of Western Europe as it does to those that take place in cities like Paris or Brussels. The data shows it is much, much harder to get people to read those stories.” 

—Martin Belam, Medium, March 28, 2016

I shall always ❤ New York. And on Marathon Day I stand again

with Boston, and #BlackLivesMatter in every Charleston nightly.

Bien sûr je suis Paris parce que j’aime Paris chaque instant,

chaque moment de l'année. Bruxelles?  Bruxelles est assez

de français pour moi d'être Bruxelles maar ook

Vlaams naar Brussel elk moment van het jaar.

Last summer I devoured simit and baklava at Taksim windows

and petted sprawled dogs in the shade of the Obelisks: İstanbul'u

(but to Ankara I have never been).

Part of me must be Lahore. Remember? it was Easter after all

although I cannot find a timely # for that attack 3 weeks ago

(#PeshawarAttack impertinent; #PakistanBleeding obsolete) and

if میں نے پاکستان تھے whenever a bomb explodes in Pakistan

how to find the time to face Java and Bali?

islands where I love a Muslim whose faith in  الله 

is sighted darkly at every Western checkpoint, mall, hotel,
monitored whitely by attendants on Southwest Airlines,

and so I will—must—be Aleppo, Hit and Lashkar Gah 

walking dead from graves cracked open by exceptional shocks

of retribution and survival 
of the selfish.

James Penha edits TheNewVerse.News .

HANDING DOWN TRADITIONS

by Rebecca Evans

Image source: Olde Colony Bakery

Olde Colony Bakery, “home of the original Charleston
benne wafer,” boasts a website where you can buy
benne wafers online. “Our 3oz Benne Wafer
Standup Pack is our medium-sized gift option!”
                    Early 18th century slaves brought benne seeds
                    from Africa to the Carolina sea islands,
                    cultivated them in hidden, forbidden gardens,
                    a staple food seed for rice cookery.
                    Their rice was the bread of life.

At Charleston City Market and Edisto Island
beautiful, costly sweetgrass baskets are sold.
“Our baskets bring African flair into your home!”
Works of art crafted by gifted black hands, a skill
handed down from Sierra Leone slave ancestors.
                    Large, flat, utilitarian marsh grass baskets were
                    coiled tight enough to hold water, fanners woven
                    by slaves to winnow the rice they harvested
                    on swampy, low country plantations.

Mother Emanuel church stands less than a mile
from the Old Slave Mart, where, around the corner
the old Huguenot Church honors my ancestor
on a bronze plaque, his dates, 1720 – 1774.
                    Rev. Francis Pelot, Baptist minister, was very rich,
                    owner of three islands, thousands of mainland
                    Carolina acres, plantations, “a great number
                    of slaves and stock in abundance.” Owned
                    a valuable library, devoted time to books.

What kind of wealthy master he was, we’ll never know,
A Baptist intimate friend deemed him “a worthy man,”
“in his family, a bright example of true piety.” But
Frederick Douglass writes that religious slaveholders
“are the worst,” describes the cruelty of an evangelical Methodist.
my ancestor in Maryland, the Rev. Rigby Hopkins
                    who boasted of his whipping slaves "with
                    what wonderful ease . . . to alarm their fears.
                    And yet there was not a man any where round . . .
                    that prayed earlier, later, louder
                    than this same reverend slave-driver."

When television broke the news from Charleston
last June, I joined the nation’s shocked mourners,
grieved the loss of the massacred nine, cut down
while heavenward bound in forgiving prayer, and
pitied the white boy dreaming a race war dream
to spread conflict sown by slaveholders like my ancestors
and handed down the line to sons, along with their slaves
and slave gifts of benne seeds and beautiful basketry.

Rebecca Evans, a retired journalist and editor who helped aspiring writers get published, has taken up poetry reading and writing and finds inspiration in Peggy Rozga’s class at UW-Waukesha. Rebecca now hosts a regular gathering of poet friends to share their writing at her dining table in Greenfield, Wisconsin.

EMANUEL

by Ed Gold

We asked the red bottle-brushes blooming off the back porch,
we asked the woman who was singing and writing parking tickets,
we asked the colossal white blossoms of the magnolia tree,
we asked the cashier named Wilnetta at the Harris Teeter,
we asked the cedar waxwings swarming the holly berries,
we asked the new baby, Helena Wren Silverman,
we asked the hailstones striking west of the Ashley,
we asked the oil truck that overturned and blocked I-26,
we asked the helicopter circling the neighborhood,

we asked the couple holding hands under a maroon umbrella,
we asked the two mourning doves sitting close on the wire,
we asked the cardinal who placed a millet seed in his mate’s mouth,
we asked the aviator sunglasses forgotten on the porch table,
we asked the smudgy smoke of the citronella candle,
we asked the blue flowers on the Kleenex box,
we asked the juice glass with a decal from a moose hall,
we asked the first brown clutch of leaves in the green of the pin oak,
we asked the empty hammock on the porch next door,

we asked the crow we thought was an eagle until he cawed,
we asked the green anole who hopped on a branch and turned brown,
we asked the hawks whose chick refused to leave the nest,
we asked the loquat tree that didn’t blossom and fruit this year,
we asked the mutant sunflowers sprouting under the bird feeders,
we asked our neighbor whose throat is healing from radiation,
we asked the house finch on the sconce with his eye crusted over,
we asked the little boy who played dead under the pew,
we asked the mockingbird who sang for five minutes before starting over.


Author’s note: This is a poem I wrote after the massacre at the Emanuel AME church. We live three blocks away.

Ed Gold has a chapbook Owl and poems in the New York Quarterly, Kakalak, Cyclamens and Swords, Poet Lore, Gargoyle, and many others. He is a grateful member of the Long Table Poets in Charleston, South Carolina. Ed Gold lives in Charleston with his wife Amy Robinson.

STAY-AT-HOME CITIZEN

by William Aarnes

Since the legislatures,
in cahoots with the NRA,

governors, presidents, and courts
have interfered with our right

to peacefully assemble,
I now venture out

no further than the garden
and the mailbox.

I have everything delivered,
stream my entertainment,

practice my faith online,
And, since I can request

ballots from home,
I vote absentee.


William Aarnes lives in South Carolina.

MY FLAG

by Marilyn Peretti

At the mic on the sidewalk
some kids say justice
is the meaning of the Fourth,
some say fireworks, some
some say cookouts,
but some say justice.

Did they mean fairness,
decency, moral rightness,
equity, abiding by law?
Is this taught to children now?
Fourth of July means justice?

Maybe these wise children know
that the Fourth does not mean
burning churches of black folks,
battering a man in a police van,
giving up on finding prison escapees,
denying the poor health insurance,
or shooting pray-ers inside a church.

I wave my American flag
for what the children have learned.


Marilyn Peretti, Glen Ellyn, Illinois, is published by The New Verse News and by various journals; nominated for Pushcart Prize; and publishes poetry books on www.blurb.com/bookstore. She writes with fellow poets in Chicago's western suburbs. 

DEAR GOD:

by Gil Hoy

Take down
the stars and bars,

the Confederate
battle flag that flies,

over the Capitol
in Charleston.

And take down
the Confederate

veterans' monument
and the statue of the white

supremacist who was once
governor and senator

that stand nearby.
Then take down all

the vestiges of slavery,
every fiber and every stone,

every hair-thin remnant
of that terrible time

until not a rootlet remains
in any city or town.

But when the symbols of racism
are all cleared away, taken down

carried off and finally
gone:  How to remove

the lingering hatred
from a grown man’s heart?


Gil Hoy is a Boston trial lawyer. He studied poetry at Boston University, while receiving a B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science, magna cum laude, and won a silver medal in the New England University Wrestling Championship at 177 lbs. Gil received an MA in Government from Georgetown University and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law. He served as an elected Brookline, Massachusetts Selectman for four terms. Gil’s poems have been published recently in The New Verse News, Clark Street Review, The Penman Review, The Antarctica Journal, Third Wednesday, The Potomac, The Zodiac Review and To Hold A Moment Still, Harbinger Asylum’s 2014 Holidays Anthology.

A CLASP

by George Held





So as I left the hygienist’s chair, white-clad Reesha
Said she’d taken a cruise to Turks and Bermuda
And, despite sunscreen, her tawny skin had turned
Black as the Nigerian queen Amina’s,

And I said, “Look at my sad white skin,”
Reddened and pebbled by actinic keratoses
(and smeared with cream to spare it from cancer)
And then I said what was on my mind about

Charleston, the city of Charles (whose name isn’t even
In the Bible), where white-racist hatred had burst
From a gun barrel and killed Pastor Pinckney
And his prayer-meeting sisters and brethren,

And I thought of all the black forbearance, the black
Sympathy, the black nobility that has steadied
A course that might have burst into whirlwind, war
And more deaths of worthy men and women,

And we two, Reesha and I, standing face to face
In the cramped space between high-tech dentistry
And the human race, the only race, clasped hands
And said to each other that in our own history

We at least are friends as I hoped that I was not
Just a superannuated white man
Deluded that he was without the taint
Of racial prejudice.


George Held, a regular contributor to The New Verse News, has a new book out from Poets Wear Prada, Culling: New & Selected Nature Poems.

THE GREAT GOD

by Howard Winn

Image source: The Holy Prepuce

The Great God
gun speaks in its own language
and that is considered scripture
by the lovers of shotguns and pistols
even assault rifles which also
talk in the tongues of the
holy disciples congregated
in the church of the Association
that puts the fear of that god
into the souls of anxious politicians
who care more for re-election
than for economic justice or
saving the life of church goers
or innocent school children
as they continually bow their
heads in meek obeisance
to the power of that great
God gun the all powerful
ultimate Deity and icon of
their single minded faith


Howard Winn’s fiction and poetry, has been published recently by such journals as Dalhousie Review, Taj Mahal Review (India), The Long Story,  Cold Mountain Review, Antigonish Review, New Verse News, Chaffin Review, Thin Air Literary Journal, and Whirlwind. His B. A. is from Vassar College. He has an M.A. in Creative Writing from Stanford University. His doctoral work was done at N. Y. U. He has been a social worker in California and currently is a faculty member of SUNY as Professor of English.

IMAGINING ETHEL LANCE

by Carl Boon 

Najee Washington holds a photo of her grandmother Ethel Lance, one of the nine people killed in Wednesday's shooting at Emanuel AME Church, as she stands outside her home Friday, June 19, 2015, in Charleston, S.C. "She cared for everyone. She took care of people. She would give her last to anyone," said Washington. "That's what she was and that's what she'll always be." David Goldman / AP via NBC News

Tonight and removed from bullets,
she'd be swinging her great-grandson
in Wannamaker Park
in North Charleston,
happy for the chance
to see him smile--this kid
of unruly teeth and Jurassic World
pyjamas. Because Saturday nights
while her daughter waited tables
at the Olde Harbor Restaurant,
she had him. They ate
her famous lasagna, did puzzles,
imagined steamships. It made her
alive--past the dusty pews
of the church and the gracious oaks
of West Ashley. I don't care tonight
that bullets brought her down;
I care that this boy,
who knew Mahalia Jackson's name,
and Jesse Owens's stance,
and Dr. King's speeches,
brought her up
on so many Saturday nights.


Carl Boon lives in Istanbul, where he directs the English prep school and teaches courses in literature at Yeni Yuzyil University. Recent ot forthcoming poems appear in The Tulane Review, The Blue Bonnet Review, Posit, and other magazines.

ON FATHER'S DAY

by Joan Mazza

I’m not posting photos on social media
of my father with his arm around me,
both of us grinning, oozing affection.
No photos like that exist, not even
from my childhood.

On Father’s Day, I’m perusing again
of my boozy father’s last act, self-
inflicted gun shot that whisked him out
of this world and our lives. How did he
excuse it?

I’m remembering how my short-fused
husband insisted my father have a gun,
took him to buy that Walther PPK
and showed him how to use it.
Self-defense,

he said. That was the gun he used when
he could not defend himself against misery
and hopeless blues, my mother’s cancer.
I’m thinking how glad I am that my Ex
never was a father.

In an old photo, my not-yet-Ex husband stands
unsmiling, pistol on hip, rifle and Confederate flag
crossed across his chest, wearing a string tie
and cowboy hat. I took that photo, and only
was bemused.


Joan Mazza has worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, seminar leader, and has been a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. Author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self (Penguin/Putnam), her poetry has appeared in Rattle, Whitefish Review, Off the Coast, Kestrel, Slipstream, American Journal of Nursing, The MacGuffin, Mezzo Cammin, Buddhist Poetry Review, and The Nation. She ran away from the hurricanes of South Florida to be surprised by the earthquakes and tornadoes of rural central Virginia, where she writes poetry and does fabric and paper art.

CHARLESTON CHURCH MASSACRE

by Roger Aplon

"We forgive you."

Swept-up
on  a blast of heated air – one flash & another

& nowhere  to run,
to hide, to breathe free  . . . & he keeps
coming on
this pilfered heart, this shameless ragging,
like a lion on fire,
provoked, pissed-off,  punishing, a collapsed invention where
fear marries power,
with guns blazing the angel of death smacks his lips
slurping up a treacheries soup . . .
Speak not of justice, sanity & bigotry in one breath. Speak not
of mercy without
passion. Do unto others as you do unto me. 
The words ring wrong.
If harmony reigns what will come to fill the vacuum?
Guilt-of-the-fathers
passed to the sons.  Inbred fear of retribution. The Other, no longer dark
but from the light
comes to resurrect that supreme fabric. Owner. Master. Overseer.
That sublime indifference
born of  guilt – suspicion – nurturing – fomenting.
Is there no one to speak
against the blind warrior?
We forgive you.
It’s said with conviction – tearful & full of grace. Who’s earned
such a holy gift?
Tattooed across his brow a crown of thorns, swastika etched
between his shoulder blades.
This is the time of mutilation, of dementia, of disgrace.
Where are the voices of revolution?
Those willing to stand & be counted, unafraid of hard choices?
The one who bears malice bears
a cataclysm too long dismissed as fated, too long
      tolerated, too long unchallenged.
“Born in blood, so blood must be spilled.”
It’s the way of the smuggler,
the rapist, the strangler of kids, the demon lover of hatred & dread.
To this we say, with all our strength – No more!


Roger Aplon has had eleven books published: Ten of poetry (most recently It’s Only TV) & one of prose: Intimacies. He’s been awarded prizes & honors including an arts fellowship from the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation in Taos, New Mexico. After eight years in Barcelona, Spain, he now lives in Beacon, New York where he publishes the poetry magazine Waymark & is working on a new collection: Poetic Improvisations after musical ‘experiments’ by composers such as John Adams, Elliot Carter, Miles Davis & John Zorn.

THE TYGER AND THE LAMB . . . AGAIN

by Earl J Wilcox

She said: we forgive you.
He was mute.

She said: hate will not win.
He looked straight ahead.

She said: repent and find your savior.
He said” Yes, sir, to the judge.

They said: Every fiber of our being hurts.
He turned and walked out.

Today there is no balm in Gilead.


Earl J Wilcox lives in South Carolina, cooks, writes, watches baseball, contributes regularly to The New Verse News.

IT'S CONSTITUTIONAL (WE'RE NOT WELL REGULATED)

by William Aarnes

Cartoon by Steve Stegelin, Charleston City Paper,  July 25, 2012

“For more than a hundred years, the answer was clear, even if the words of the amendment itself were not. The text of the amendment is divided into two clauses and is, as a whole, ungrammatical: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” The courts had found that the first part, the “militia clause,” trumped the second part, the “bear arms” clause. In other words, according to the Supreme Court, and the lower courts as well, the amendment conferred on state militias a right to bear arms—but did not give individuals a right to own or carry a weapon. Enter the modern National Rifle Association. . . . ” —Jeffrey Toobin, The New Yorker, December 17, 2012 (i.e. after Newtown)

“The most recent national poll of NRA members that we could find, done in January 2013 by Johns Hopkins University, found that 73.7 percent of the members supported requiring background checks for all gun sales.” —PolitiFact Wisconsin, March 18, 2015

An accidental death here and there,
an impulsive murder-suicide,

a massacre of moviegoers,
a gunning-down of worshippers,

a slaughter of children in classrooms,
a lucrative trade in weapons

all being in keeping with the preservation
of our crazed State,

the need of our People
to shoot each other

shall not be infringed.


 William Aarnes lives in South Carolina.  His work has appeared recently in Field, Heron Tree, and South 85.

TAUTOLOGY

by Judith Terzi

Mike de Adder

--with a nod to Bob Dylan

Ecstasy of the shot
Barbie doll for some  
Interchangeable parts
Three hundred million guns
Butter pecan      on your mark
Buy a shoe      a fishing hook  
A cap      a book of puns
How many deaths will it take?  
Will the wind be fresh?  
Buy a bike      Take a hike
Watch a lightning bug
Until the white dove
Has a good night's sleep
Most wanted arm
Stick of Juicy Fruit      sweet
Explosion on the tongue  
Remember when Trigger
Was a horse?      Gravedigger
Occupied     Lethal recourse
Not denied     Air-cooled fire  
Lock-bolt desire      Most wanted
Colt      Tautology assault

Judith Terzi is a Southern California poet and educator whose recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in journals and anthologies such as Off the Coast, Raintown Review, Unsplendid, and Wide Awake: The Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond (Beyond Baroque). If You Spot Your Brother Floating By is her latest chapbook from Kattywompus Press.

THE SNAKES

by Carolyn Gregory

The Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, South Carolina, a day after Dylann Roof allegedly murdered nine congregants following a Bible study. PHOTOGRAPH BY JOE RAEDLE/GETTY via The New Yorker.

The snakes are slithering
from under the rocks
where worms and old bodies
lie buried.

The bones are not stopping them
from venomous thoughts
of squeezing innocents to death
or sinking their fangs in.

For they have been hungry
in their hiding holes,
thinking of the red meat
of their prey running quickly
across the prairie

to their own small caves
between mountains and cactus,
fearful for their families
and children.

Nothing will paralyze the snakes
save the hatchets good men wield
in the dead of night
to save our people's freedom.


Carolyn Gregory has published poems and music reviews in American Poetry Review, Seattle Review, Cutthroat, Borderlands: Texas, Main Street Rag and Wilderness House Literary Review. She previously won a Massachusetts Cultural Council Award and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She has published two full length volumes of poetry through Windmill Editions in Florida: Open Letters (2009) and Facing the Music (2015).

ICE AND FIRE

by James Penha

after Frost . . . after Francis . . . after Charleston

Some see America destroyed by hate;
others forecast a torrid flood as its fate.

I feel its glacial faults cracking 'long lines
      blue and red and black and white,
thence to implode and dissolve, O Columbia!
      into the ocean, a gem out of sight.


James Penha edits The New Verse News.

THE THIRTEENTH STATION — CHARLESTON 2015

by Janice Lynch Schuster

Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America

If only the women had carried
Guns in their Bibles and prayed
With rage, not love

If only the children had carried
Guns in their backpacks
Their teachers might
Have been spared

If only the boy playing
In the yard had something
Real to fire

If only the suffocating
Man had had gunpowder,,
Not tobacco

If only we armed us all
Who worship at the glamorous
Fortresses of our fears

Brought to us
By the NRA and Congress afraid
Itself to say no

If only we let the bloodbath
Baptize us daily in horror
While our blue hearts
Beat on and we tweet

Hashtags of despair
As if to absolve ourselves
Of the killings we did not stop
And the ballots  we failed
To cast


Janice Lynch Schuster is the author of a collection, Saturday at the Gym, and has been published in various print and online venues, including Poet Lore, Your Daily Poem, and The Broadkill Review. She writes about health care and public policy, lives in Annapolis, MD, and works in Washington, DC.

JUNE 18TH, 2015

by David Chorlton

Lisa Doctor joins a prayer circle down the street from the Emanuel AME Church early Thursday, June 18, 2015 following a shooting Wednesday night in Charleston, S.C. | David Goldman / AP via Chicago Sun-Times

Being offensive
wasn’t the intention
in mentioning how simple
it was to visit
the USSR, compared
to entering the USA
today. So, where else
would you rather live?
to which the response
begins with Anywhere
elections aren’t for sale
or the campaigns
a drawn-out circus
because this isn’t
the first time someone
has suggested this
is the greatest of all
nations, defined
now by a wall
and the constant claim
of freedom, which
extends today
to the young man’s
right to go out with
his birthday gun
because nobody
could assume
he’d take it to church
and actually use it there.


David Chorlton was born in Austria, grew up in Manchester, England, and lived for several years in Vienna before moving to Phoenix in 1978. In September, 2015, he will participate as a poet in the Fires of Change exhibition at the Coconino Center for the Arts in Flagstaff (Sponsored by the Southwest Fire Science Consortium, the Landscape Conservation Initiative, and the National Endowment for the Arts.)