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.

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.

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).

MUSINGS ON A LINE BY REDD FOXX

two triolets
by Julie Steiner

"Trump finally calls Waffle House hero." —Los Angeles Times, May 14, 2018

"'I'm Not A Hero,' Says James Shaw Jr., Acclaimed As Hero Of Waffle House Attack." —NPR, April 23, 2018

"Trump on Florida shooting: 'I really believe I'd run in there, even if I didn't have a weapon.’" —CNN, February 26, 2018


Heroes ain’t born—they’re cornered.
They say, “I wasn’t brave!
I had no choice,” when honored.
Heroes ain’t born—they’re cornered.
What accolades they’ve garnered,
they claim they don’t deserve.
Heroes ain’t born—they’re cornered.
They say, “I wasn’t brave.”

That puffed-up politician
who claims heroic courage
and lack of hesitation—
that puffed-up politician—
has trademarked truth-distortion.
Disgusted, I disparage
that puffed-up politician.
(Who claims heroic courage?)


Julie Steiner rolls her eyes in San Diego, California.

RULING CLASS

by George Held

Left: Cameron Kasky, Photograph by Rhona Wise / AFP / Getty via The New Yorker, Feb. 23, 2018.
Right: Bethany Garrison, Photograph by Sharif Hamza, The New Yorker, Mar, 26, 2018.

The Parkland Kids have made
the cover of TIME: new
icons of a teen-mad age,
out to change the world,
or at least U.S. gun laws.

There’s barefoot Jaclyn,
buzzcut Emma, and the boys:
Alex Wind, Cameron Kasky,
and David Hogg, chairs of the board
of The Stoneman Douglas Survivors

and so far Kevlar impervious
to competitive envy,
so far without endorsements
(will they appear in ads
as a group or individuals?).

Even their motto, “Never
Again,” has brought no protest
from those who use it to resist
the Shoah: Whose slogan is it?
Which will happen again first?

But the Survivors’ suburban faces
ricochet off the teens with guns
in the pages of The New Yorker:
rural, poised, resolute, responsible
owners of shotguns, handguns, AR 16’s,

practicing where “shooting
felt as common as skateboarding.”
Whichever side you choose,
Americans, how will you accommodate
both law-abiding groups?


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

I FLAUNT MY "F" GRADE

by Tricia Knoll






Fumed.
Fussed at folly.
Feeling firebrand-ish.
Flabbergasted and furious.
Formidable at finger-pointing.
Fixed, firm and fretted.
Fault-finder.
Fireproof and flinty.
Family-oriented.
Friendly to school kids.
Unflinching
Finally,
NRA: keep my F rating
in your book. I know it’s in
the big book at end of days,
the one that counts.
Finis.

Tricia Knoll is an Oregon writer whose poetry book How I Learned to Be White (an investigation of how white privilege has impacted her life and how she has come to understand it) is now available from Antrim House. 

HELL IS PUNGENT WITH GUNS

(My Neighbor Calls Gun Owners ‘Beelzeguns,’ 

Says They Call Themselves ‘Gun Nuts’ 

Because Otherwise They Don’t Have Any Balls)

Graphic from Jon Stewart's The Daily Show.

by Ron Riekki


There have been two killed and twenty injured
by gun violence in the U.S. since Parkland.*
The melting pot is melting because of climate
change and the heat of being ambushed by
a blizzard of shrapnel. I taught a course on gun
violence and near the halfway point a student’s

girlfriend was shot and killed on campus. Life
used to stand until a Loaded Gun carried me
away to my graveyard shift where I don’t teach
anymore, sunk into the valley of security,
unarmed security, where I’m paid to stay awake
and at night, in the mountains of dark I remember

a kid telling me during that class that he used to take
his gun and shoot it at the lake at his parents’ camp,
December, Alabama, trying to make the bullets
skip. I asked him if he thought he might have
killed someone by mistake doing that and he told
me, Nah, no one was around for miles. There’ve

been more than two killed, more than twenty injured
now since.* Since. In Detroit, I remember a moment
on the street where someone commented on
another person’s visible bullet-hole scar.  He
lifted up his shirt to reveal more and then a bunch
of those nearby started sharing their bullet holes,

pant legs rolled up, shirts off, the drinking
of wounds. In Virginia, I delivered a Feast Pizza
to a trailer where the guy sat on his historical sofa
holding an old shotgun pointed at my college chest.
I asked what the hell he was doing and he said,
I just wanted to see your reaction. His girl-

friend told him to put the gun down,
but he didn’t. When I got back to the Dominos,
one of the other drivers asked, Did he do it to you?
He likes to do that to everyone who delivers there.
A cop told me about a kid who got shot in the eye
and the bullet ricocheted and came out the other eye.

During EMT class, the instructor asked if any
of us had been shot and one of the students
raised his hand; he’d shot himself by mistake,
cleaning his gun. The instructor told us a story
of how he got shot by a kid when he was doing CPR
on a rival gang member that they didn’t want saved.

By a kid, I mean a child. By a child, I mean that we
are drowning in the shallow end. After school shootings,
gun sales go up. I mean, throw up. As in puke. “It’s too
soon to talk about gun control.”  Hell, it’s too late.
Graffiti by my apartment says, What You Rape
Is What You Sewer with an AR-15 policed underneath,

plastered to the wall, pulverized to the wall in onyx
paint. Two times in my life, when talking about gun
control, I’ve had a person reach over and pull a gun out
of nowhere. Anti-magic. One was under a couch.
Another in a purse. As if guns were cigarettes.
As if guns were TV channels. As if the guy who lived

across from me in Chicago wasn’t shot and killed
in his apartment. My favorite superheroes never
use a gun. That’s for villains. Batarangs and bat-darts—
sure, but I always prefer those who simply outsmart, whose
sheer intelligence comes out. The opposite of those
who cure guns with guns, who stop choking by choking

more. The king of choking. We elected the king
of choking. Chos—a Persian word for fart.  The NRA chos-
king. A rump . . . Real hunters use bow-and-arrow. They bow
before the flesh and honor the animal by using every
body part, not sitting next to an elephant, leaning
against its belly with the gun in his crotch. Cowards.


*Accurate as of February 21, 2018. The numbers have enlarged since then.


Ron Riekki wrote U.P.: a novel (Great Michigan Read nominated) and edited The Way North: Collected Upper Peninsula New Works (2014 Michigan Notable Book), Here: Women Writing on Michigan's Upper Peninsula (2016 Independent Publisher Book Award), and And Here: 100 Years of Upper Peninsula Writing, 1917-2017 (Michigan State University Press, 2017).