PLUS ÇA CHANGE . . .

by George Held

by Cardow, Ottawa Citizen

Gun control support fades three months after Florida massacre 

—Reuters/Ipsos poll May 23 2018

This time it was going to be different.
This time the losers were going to win.
This time the good guys were named Emma
and Cameron and David and the survivor
parents were hip, articulate, determined.

And then they ran into the NRA,
the intransigent bought legislators,
the Second Amendment zealots and the
nation’s sense of titanic inertia in
favor of the status quo, and nothing changed.

The wise guys were right: No massacre, like
Sandy Hook or Las Vegas, will change
the deep culture’s love of guns and aggression,
winners and losers…plus c’est la même chose.

George Held, a longtime contributor to TheNewVerse.News, writes from New York. His twentieth collection is Dog Hill Poems (Seattle, 2017).

CALIFORNIA SHOOTING: STATEMENT BY RICHARD MARTINEZ

Our son Christopher and six others
are dead.           Our family
has a message for every parent out there.            You
don’t think it will happen           to your child
until it does.

Chris was a really
great kid. Ask anyone
who knew him. His death           has left
our family           lost
and broken.

Why
did Chris die? Chris died
because of craven,
irresponsible politicians
and the NRA.

They talk about gun rights.
What about Chris’s right
to live? When
will this insanity stop? When
will enough people say,

‘Stop this madness, we don’t
have to live like this.'
Too many have died.
We should say to ourselves:
‘Not          one           more.'

SCHOOL SHOOTING

by Kit  Zak



School Shooting, Washington Post: 10/22/13
garners page three

                         no front page treatment      
          
           a kid wielding a semi-automatic

               middle-school battlefield
                                                                                  common
as  dirt  
                                                                   twelve-year-olds
with PTSD 


                                                                    nightmare’s
undying sun-blot
                                                                   childhood
obliterated
We shrug weary shoulders 

        the politicians’ dead words  
                                                                                   await
the NRA's whitewash


Kit  Zak retired from university teaching and moved to the beach in Delaware, where she has been involved in environmental causes. She  has published most recently in The Broadkill Review, The Blue Collar Review, A Time of Singing, and Avocet.