GUNS

by Alan Catlin

after reading Ron Riekki

The shooters at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999.

      “And I wonder if we can’t talk about guns.

      So that’s why I wanted to talk about guns this year.
      Because we can’t.”

      —Ron Riekki, “My Only Friend, The End”

Years ago I wrote
a series of poems responding
to photos of high school students
who were shot in random gun violence

Each picture showed their wounds
their scars
some horrific
some less so but

but they were gunshot wounds
to kids 
in school
minding their own business

Each picture had a brief story
of what happened

Some told of best friends
sweethearts
kids they knew
dying in front of them
next to them

for no apparent reason
other than some angry
person had access
to a gun

One, way back in the 50s
yes, the 50s
was a kid from Brooklyn
who dreamed of being
first baseman for the Yankees

A guy walked up to him
in the high school hall
and shot him in the gut
and he felt his
dreams die

But he was the lucky one
The exception

He lived and played
first base for the Yankees
and the Cubs

He showed the camera
his scar

I guess
you never know

So, I wrote a series
of poems to those
pictures
remembering watching
the Columbine kids
running from the high school
and thinking I had kids
they could be running too
or worse

There was a shooter

At the school
My oldest went to 
While he was there
But no one was hurt

And I thought of
all this unnecessary shooting
of guns
and sent those short
narrative poems out

And not one was accepted

An editor said,
“No one wants to read
stuff like this”

That’s why we have guns
Why we have school shootings

Editor’s note: Ron Riekki covered every mass shooting in Michigan (all 17) from July 4, 2025 through July 4, 2026 for The New Verse News.

Alan Catlin is the poetry and reviews editor of Misfitmagazine.net. His latest full-length book of poetry is Still Life with Apocalypse from Shelia Na Gig Editions.

WHY I’LL NEVER OWN AN AR-15 EVEN THOUGH MIKE FLYNN’S “ARMY OF GOD” HAS SET ITS SIGHTS ON ME

by B. Fulton Jennes

Because meat bleeds.

Because we all know guns aren’t toys.

Because the only difference between men and boys is the kill power of their toys.

Because there are places in the world where an AK-47 can be purchased for as little as $6. 

Because once a dog is blooded it will never stop killing.

Because flesh, our flesh, is meat.

Because there are a million more guns in the U.S. than there are people.

Because Sandy Hook mother Veronique Pozner saw to it that six-year-old Noah had an open-casket viewing, with only a soft cloth covering his blown-away jaw and a white stone placed where his left hand should have been.

Because the last school shooting was 57 days ago, no 53 days, no FUCKING LAST WEEK.

Because I don’t want to bleed.

Because children still watch Sesame Street and sleep with nightlights on.

Because children are meat.

Because one death is a tragedy but a million deaths are a statistic.

Because once I start hating I will never stop.

Because I saw what Stevie Amadon’s toy .22 did to that woodchuck’s head when I was a six.

Because children bleed.

Because there just aren’t enough Bandaids to go around.

Because my students cry during lock-down drills.

Because I have a baseball bat by my classroom door to take out any asshole with an AR-15.

Because we can’t arm every teacher, pastor, rabbi, playground supervisor, Asian masseuse, unarmed Black driver, concertgoer, jogger, homeless person, and Latin-X fifth grader.

Because we might try.

Because Rachel Scott, the first victim Columbine, bled.

Because Amerie Jo Garza bled when she tried to call 911 from her Robb Elementary classroom.

Because teacher Scott Beigel opened his Parkland door to save students, and bled.

Because six-year-old Noah Pozner bled and bled and bled.

Because God is not a recruiter for the Army of God.

Because some say the world will end in fire, some in ice.

Because, either way, it will end in blood.

B. Fulton Jennes is Poet Laureate of Ridgefield, CT, and poet-in-residence at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. Her poems have appeared widely in literary journals and anthologies, including The Comstock Review, Right Hand Pointing,Tupelo Quarterly, The Night Heron Barks, Tar River Poetry, SWIMM, and Extreme Sonnets II. Her collection Blinded Birds (Finishing Line Press) received the 2022 International Book Award for a poetry chapbook. Jennes’ poem “Glyphs of a Gentle Going” was awarded the 2022 Lascaux Prize. 

OUTLIER

by Bonnie Proudfoot

Cartoon by Clay Jones

Outside, the chirping of birds is erased

by sirens and the latest newsfeed delivers

the latest news, the camera goes back

to school for this one, what a bitch,

some shy 15-year-old, his heart tethered

to his gun, uses lead for his brand of graffiti,

he wants to be a daredevil, a showstopper,

a level up in the (anti-) social strata

Columbine, Sandy Hook, Parkland,

new codes for manhood. Maybe

he was always an outlier,

maybe instead of a pet ocelot,

his dad bought him a Black Friday pistol,

he posts his picture on Facebook the next day

some ephemeral way to prove that

someone loves him.

 

In the hallway, the slaughter.

Bullets crisscross the walls,

Bodies left to bleed out on the floor,

outside a classroom door,

a voice calls, It’s ok, bro,

it’s the police you can come out now,

But the other students

have too much skin in the game,

stagger out the back window, shake. We

see the flowers, a few more crosses

on the roadway, messages of what’s

at stake. Meanwhile in America,

Kyle Rittenhouse walks free,

Parkland students protested,

but some in the US Congress denied

that shooting even happened. We

will see gun sales spike before Christmas,

Today, it’s hunting season in Ohio,

shots ring out in the woods,

the birds become silent. Sometimes I

can’t tell where the shots are coming from,

where they are headed.

Bonnie Proudfoot is a recipient of a Fellowship for the Arts in Creative Writing from the West Virginia department of Culture and History, and has had fiction and poetry published in The Gettysburg Review, Kestrel, Sheila-Na-Gig, Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel, and other journals. Her first novel, Goshen Road, was published by Swallow Press in January of 2020, and was selected by the Women’s National Book Association for one of its Great Group Reads for 2020.  The novel was also long-listed for the 2021 PEN/ Hemingway award for debut fiction.

NINE DEAD IN DAYTON

by Martin H. Levinson

Map of the 2,162 mass shootings since Sandy Hook. —Vox

twenty-two in El Paso, twenty-one
in San Ysidro, forty-nine in Orlando,
fourteen in San Bernardino,
fifty-eight by a Las Vegas casino,
a crowd of concertgoers,
bodies lying bleeding, a
nation that is reeling, the
core of who we are, posting
hate, loading up, firing fast
and down they go in Walmarts,
at festivals, inside of schools,
inside of bars, one hundred
rounds a minute, death is a
democracy, knows no color,
knows no sex, equality for
all, bullets pierce pliant flesh,
splinter bones, don’t tread on
me the gun nuts say, Columbine
and Parkland, Sandy Hook,
Aurora, thoughts and prayers,
fictitious care, death and
dying everywhere.

Martin H. Levinson is a member of the Authors Guild, National Book Critics Circle, PEN America, and the book review editor for ETC: A Review of General Semantics. He has published ten books and numerous articles and poems. He holds a PhD from NYU and lives in Forest Hills, New York.

ACROSS NATIONAL POETRY MONTH

by Judith Terzi

Across the Atlantic
a 13-year old imitates
as best he can with a crossbow
that kills a teacher.
Anniversary of Columbine
in a Barcelona school.
Blossoms on the verge
of unlocking in Colorado:
blue violet about to spill
across the San Juans.
Across the Capitol lawn
a gyrocopter glides to a stop.
No odes aboard, only
political prose for campaign
finance reform. Oh mail me
a poem, Mr. Mailman,
make it the lyric of the month.
I know you're someone's hero,
an elegy clinging to a wing,
like migrants hanging
to la vita on a shoddy ship
across the Mediterranean.
They sold their organs to pay
pirates in coyotes' clothing.
And across the bench sits
Dzhokhar, gaze pasted
to the scribble of alphabet,
bowls of letters across a page.
If onlys dangle between blue
lines like columbines hugging
the soil before the next rain.


Judith Terzi is a Southern California poet 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.

CONFUSED

by Eloise Bruce

The bottom of the ad reads, "If it's good enough for the professional, it's good enough for you." Image source: Business Insider.

When you relish Mossberg, Rock River and Rugger
how do we know if you are a good man or a bad man?
Maybe of two minds, you are a good man who kills the bad man

or vice versa?  Are you the kind of man following orders
to shoot students to death in Kent Ohio.
Are you an autistic boy with an AR-15 assault rifle

or a crazy man or maybe a bad woman
with a sig Sauer semiautomatic?
You can get an assault weapon in mossy oak pink camouflage.

Are you wearing a uniform or a badge
and aiming a Glock 9-millimeter while worshipping
the Berretta, Bushmaster, Colt?

Are you armed like the deputy
was at Columbine?  Did you fire at the bad boy?
Did you miss? did he miss?


Eloise Bruce’s book Rattle was published by CavenKerry Press, and she is a member of the poetry and performance group Cool Women.  She has been involved with Playwrights Theatre’s initiative for Poetry Out Loud from its beginning in 2005.  A a Teaching Artist in schools throughout New Jersey, she focuses on poetry and theatre. She teaches for the Arts and Education Center working with middle school writers.  A fellow with the Cloud Institute for Sustainable Education, Bruce is currently working with Young Audiences of New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania on Beyond Recycling, a project allowing children to explore sustainability through the arts.