SURVIVOR'S GUILT: PARKLAND

by Alan Catlin

The mother of a recent graduate told CBS Miami last week that her daughter, Sydney Aiello, had taken her own life. Aiello (pictured above), 19, was a senior at the school during the massacre. One of her friends, Meadow Pollack, was killed. In the year since the shooting, Aiello had struggled with survivor’s guilt and had recently been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, her mother said. During the weekend, word began to spread that another Parkland teenager had also died in what authorities called an “apparent suicide.” The student’s name and age were not released, and authorities said the death was under investigation. Broward Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie announced the student’s death Sunday on Twitter, saying that “a great young man” at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School had committed suicide.” The superintendent added late Sunday night: “In the wake of two suicides that shocked the community this past week, parents & representatives from organizations throughout Broward County came together today to discuss what we can do to help students at MSD and children throughout the county cope with trauma and depression.” —The Washington Post, March 22, 2019

Not all school shooting
victims are physically
wounded

Bear no visible scars
though everyone was
aware of what happened

That she had been there,
and, somehow,
she survived through no
fault of her own

Some watched as their
best friends died while they
were unscathed

All felt helpless and knew
they would never be
the same after-that day-

She fell into a deep depression

Felt despair

Not even daily Yoga helped

It is impossible to empty
your mind after something
like that

“No one knew how I felt.”
She said.

Her best friend’s father
insisted, “He did.”
Of course, he did

“Killing yourself is not the answer.”

All the parents understand

Her friends who survived knew
what she meant

But it wasn’t enough

Sydney Aiello was 19
when she died.


Alan Catlin has published dozens of chapbooks and full-length books, most recently the chapbook Three Farmers on the Way to a Dance (Presa Press), a series of ekphrastic poems responding to the work of German photographer August Sander who did portraits of Germans before, during, and after both World Wars.

THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT, ALRIGHT

by Akua Lezli Hope

Thank you for taking up the cause
for taking on bright lights and not freezing,
for seizing the issue and not flinching
and not folding, for moving through our tears
and your fears which must be there
which are there, ever present behind closed eyelids
and dreams and even waking moments
you carry them through words you must say,
you swim through that treacle that could
embalm, could preserve could choke even as it feeds
you could stay stuck and yet you gather
and you plan and yet you clear your throats and
call us to listen how even choked and choking
heartsore and stumbling you move forward
you coalesce you make arguments that cleanse
that sear that burn obfuscating debris, clear dross
of entrenched rationales of life-taking, of warped
permissions of deranged access,
don’t listen to the naysayers, don’t,
ignore their percussive braying about
what’s become reasonable, their platforms
boom loud, are hollow bleating, you inherited a world
that has made the unthinkable usual
don’t listen to them betting against you
they always bet against you when you say no
to what prevails, when your fresh eyes refuse
to see the unseeable, foreseen, predictably
tragic, decrying the inevitability of senselessness
don’t let their demeaning misnomers distract you
whose lives are on all the lines and ransomed for
profit, whose lives underwrite the very notions
that steal them. we grieve for you we grieve for you
we’ve forgotten we’ve forgotten we’ve forgotten
to think twice about it, about the shortest distance
about straight lines, so thank you for giving
us back to ourselves who called for peace
years ago, who cried for parity, who marched and
moved and were not stuck, or tired, or worn or weary
or silent, who fought for our lives, who sometimes won

Akua Lezli Hope is a creator who uses sound, words, fiber, glass, handmade paper and wire to create poems, patterns, stories, music, adornments, sculpture and peace whenever possible. She has published 117 crochet designs. Her poetry collection Them Gone will be published by The Word Works Publishing in 2018.

RETURNING TO THE SCENE

by Devon Balwit

Parents and students arrived at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., on Sunday for the start of what officials are calling a “phased reopening” of the school. Credit David Santiago/Miami Herald, via Associated Press and The New York Times, February 25, 2018

You know you have to go back in,
that day, still sticky and unscabbed.
The border between the past and now is thin.

Few you know have stood where you have been.
Your journal entries wander, the writing crabs;
You know you have to go back in.

You stagger in the web—the whole thing spins—
talking heads with agendas—all the blab.
The border between the past and now is thin.

You hear the pop-pop-pop, the chilling din,
the screams of those now still, on slabs.
You know you have to go back in,

your soul benthic, nothing but a fin
above the waves, a periscope, camouflaged, drab.
The border between the past and now is thin.

You enter, jaw tight, leading with your chin,
by turns belligerent and undone, seeking hands to grab
You know you have to go back in,
though the border between the past and now is thin.

Devon Balwit is a writer/teacher from Portland, OR. Her poems have appeared in TheNewVerse.News, Poets Reading the News, Rattle, Redbird Weekly Reads, Rise-Up Review, Rat's Ass Review, The Rising Phoenix Review, Mobius, What Rough Beast, and more.

BIRDSONG

by Bunkong Tuon

Abby Spangler and her sixteen year-old daughter Eleanor Spangler Neuchterlein hold hands as they participate in a "lie-in" during a protest in favor of gun reform in front of the White House, Monday, Feb. 19, 2018, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) via Boston Herald.

Here, in the Northeast,
There is snow on the frozen ground.
Birds are flying from the South,
Crying madly in the mourning sky.
A man with a gun is hunting them.
The branches shake against
My bedroom window.
Their song is plaintive,
Sad, and urgent.
My glass window will shatter
If nothing is to be done.
They sing about a teacher
Crouching in the broom closet
With her high school students.
A survivor says afterward,
“First we thought it was firecrackers.
Then my friends fell down,
One by one.”
They sing about the adults
Behaving like children,
Taking no responsibility
To protect the young.
They sing about the children
Acting like adults
Marching to that great mansion,
Lying on cold concrete,
Eyes closed.  Some held hands,
Others over their chests,
As if caught dead in prayer.

Bunkong Tuon is the author of Gruel (2015) and And So I Was Blessed (2017), both poetry collections published by NYQ Books.  He's also a contributor to Cultural Weekly.

GOD GAVE US THE RIGHT

by Howard Winn

Photograph by Erik Ravelo from his 2013 sequence “Los Intocables” (“The Untouchables) featuring a variety of issues plaguing children around the world. “The right to childhood should be protected,” Ravelo writes.

to bear arms
announces the high priest of
the Church of the Rifle
and not a mere mortal
even though the government
wrote the laws that
support the dogma of this
Faith where the AK-47
has replaced the wine
and wafer that becomes
the blood and body of
the redeemer who kills
children without a qualm
as part of the new sacrament


Howard Winn has just had a novel Acropolis published by Propertius Press as well as poems in the Pennsylvania Literary Journal and in Evening Street Magazine.

COST

by Neil Creighton

Parkland students watch as Florida legislators vote down a resolution to discuss a ban on assault weapons.

So Sam rose early, saddled his donkey,
and took his children up the mountain.
And his children said
“Where is the offering, our father,
and who is this god we praise?”
“You are the offering, my children.”
Then hail of fire descended
and bright blood flowed until all were gone.
Sam sighed, thought he would pray,
wept a little as he descended the mountain.
A congregation waited below.
“It’s hard,” he said, “so hard.
But what can we do?
We don’t wish it but we must worship.”

And the great congregation shouted “Amen”.

Neil Creighton is an Australian poet whose work as a teacher of English and Drama brought him into close contact with thousands of young lives, most happy and triumphant but too many tragically filled with neglect. It also made him intensely aware of how opportunity is so unequally proportioned and his work reflects strong interest in social justice. Recent publications include Poetry Quarterly, Poeming Pigeon, Silver Birch Press, Rat's Ass Review, Praxis Mag Online, Ekphrastic Review, Social Justice Poetry, Peacock Journal, Poets Reading the News and Verse-Virtual.

A CHILDREN'S CRUSADE

by Ralph La Rosa

The evolution of revolution
is a student-led crusade,
its first and foremost resolution:
the NRA must be waylaid.


Ralph La Rosa’s work has been published online, including at TheNewVerse.News, and in the books Sonnet Stanzas and Ghost Trees.

VIGIL

by Sister Lou Ella Hickman

The Pieta Com. by Water-Lilly-Love at Deviant Art

                your child’s body stretches out on your lap    a pietá

                 as you remove the thorned crown of thoughts and prayers

                                       blood slowly crawls down the leg of your chair

                 then drop by drop marks your vigil on the floor

                                      visitors pass           your silence answers their questions

                 the outside darkness fills the window pane

                 the Senator's secretary says

                                      i have to lock up now

                  you reply

                  i’ll be back tomorrow

Sister Lou Ella Hickman is a poet, writer, and a certified spiritual director.  Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines such as First Things, Emmanuel, Third Wednesday, and TheNewVerse.News.  Her first book of poetry was entitled she: robed and wordless.

HONORING THE FALLEN

by Mary Kay Schoen

At Chichen Itza the guide said the ancient
Mayans threw innocents into the cenote
human sacrifice to forestall the end of the world

In World War II young Americans
died to defeat an evil regime
human sacrifice to make the world safe

At Littleton and Sandy Hook
and the school down the street
we send in our children

innocents in the line of fire
to defend the rights of congressmen
to finance reelection to defend the rights

of the folks who want assault rifles handy
in case the US Armed Forces are insufficient
or a deer might bound away

Shall Congress not hand out thanks
and Gold Stars to all the grieving parents
whose children gave their lives

to keep safe those seats on Capitol Hill?

Mary Kay Schoen is a Virginia writer whose feature stories have appeared in The Washington Post and association publications. Her poetry can be found in Persimmon Tree, America, and an anthology of Southwestern poetry from Dos Gatos Press. She spends too much time reading the newspaper.

RINSE AND REPEAT

by Rene Mears

Family members embrace following a shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Feb. 14, 2018, in Parkland, Fla. “Deadliest School Shootings in Modern US History” —VOA, February 14, 2018

Snow falls
Summer calls
                  Crying out for what can not be.
Winter’s chill
Sparrow’s trill
                  Darkness reigns, I can not see.
Many fools
Always cruel
                  The soul, all that remains
Only pawn
Myself gone
                  Invisible, are the chains
Your woe
Strikes the blow
                 So many lying still, asleep
Another gun
Better run
                 I’m left alone, to weep.
Never ends
These trends
                 Infinity. Infinity.  No way to decease
Winter’s chill
Sparrow’s trill
                 Funeral. Funeral. Forget the peace.

Rene Mears lives in Castle Rock, Colorado.  Nurse by day, aspiring writer by night.  This is her first published poem.

THEY AREN'T JUST TAKING SELFIES

by Tricia Knoll

Florida student Emma Gonzalez to lawmakers and gun advocates: 'We call BS'. CLICK HERE to see her dramatic speech via CNN.

having sex before graduation,
or trying pot before sloe gin.

They volunteer, ride horseback
to halt pipelines, engage

with hip hop, rockers and rappers
to say words that need saying,

march in Washington and our city,
enlist, vote, call for police accountability,

and want citizenship for DACA immigrants.
Teenagers and twenty-somethings

see a world every day on their phones
where shooters slaughter friends

in school because there is no will
to ban assault weapons and control guns.

They know shots crack living room windows
on residential streets, that gangs fight useless

wars. When young people knew rightness
of the opportunity for gay marriage,

the nation swayed and so did judges.
They are screaming for gun control

and the right to sit in school
and learn without fear

with no more brush-off praying
for teachers and families

until something is done.
Yell with them.

We need them
to know we’re with them.

Tricia Knoll is an Oregon poet who has signed petitions for gun control for more than forty years. "We are children" say the survivors in Parkland. Do we need to hear more? She doesn't. She is tired of the empty rhetoric of pray for the families and do nothing to stop gun lobby money in Washington. Her book How I Learned to Be White is coming out from Antrim House in 2018.

THRESHOLD

by Scott Bade

A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is all
of them aligned in their identity a row
of matching matches each one the source
of course of course to the extinguishing
moment that follows a spectacle of what
we have to believe about what we can’t
believe. I’m not shaking anymore, neither
am I feeling much beyond the growl of dog
fattened on tables scraps lounging next to
the fire as someone pounds on the front
door their urgency their hands their rapid
fire knocking their pulling and pushing
and twisting the door handle it will not
give it won’t turn and then the turning
to living room window peering through
frantic hands binocularing now a palm
flat slapping window all heat red as you
guessed it a rose blooming in palm’s lined
lives & the dog’s ears inside perking
as the flames spread from room to room

Scott Bade earned his Ph.D. in creative writing at Western Michigan University (WMU). In addition to teaching at Kalamazoo College and the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Scott is also the coordinator of the WMU Center for the Humanities. He is a former poetry editor for Third Coast Magazine and editorial assistant at New Issues Press. His poems have appeared in Fugue, Shadowgraph, H_NGM_N, Foothill and elsewhere. 

LIKE A BULLET HOLE

by Alexis-Rueal

What is left to write when everything
comes out looking like a bullet hole?
When everything sounds like
a coffin door closing.
How do you make room for a pen
in your hand when you are too busy hugging
toddler nephews tight and thanking
God and fate that they’re too young for school?
This time.
How many synonyms are left for despair
and fury? Do they even mean anything, anymore?
How does the poet write
when it has all been written before?
How does the poet write when they know
they will write it again tomorrow?

Alexis-Rueal is a Columbus, Ohio poet whose work has appeared in online and print journals throughout the US and in Europe. She has appeared in festivals and venues throughout Ohio and Kentucky. Her first full-length collection I Speak Hick was published by Writing Knights Press in 2016.

17 HEARTS FOR VALENTINE'S DAY

by Tammy Nuzzo-Morgan


Mourners hug during a prayer vigil Thursday for victims of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting at Parkridge Church in Coral Springs, Florida. Rhona Wise / AFP - Getty Images via NBC News.

b                e a           t
            red balloons
        b             e     a            t
            red cards
b    e        a                t
            red roses

           b                         e                 a                 t

17 hearts for Valentine’s day           

red                        red                     red               red

b                e a           t
           red hall floors

        b             e     a            t
            red on walls

b    e        a                t
            red of youthful flesh

           b                         e                 a                 t           

         2/14                    celebration of love                
        
2/14/18    life seeps         a                        way                         
children weep

b                e a           t

        b             e     a            t

b    e        a                t

           b                         e                 a                 t

be                          at                peace

Tammy Nuzzo-Morgan, named 2017 Long Island (NY) Poet of the Year by the Walt Whitman Birthplace, was the 2010-2011 Suffolk County Poet Laureate. She is the Founder/President of The North Sea Poetry Scene, Inc., President of The Poetry Place, and the editor of the poetry anthology series Long Island Sounds. She is the author of five poetry collections including Let Me Tell You Something, For Michael, and Life’s a Beach.