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Showing posts with label Pensacola. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pensacola. Show all posts

Monday, July 06, 2026

NO GUNS LEFT BEHIND

by Mickey J. Corrigan




Where are the parents
their kids running wild
down dark city streets
shooting each other
with fireworks, handguns
fighting and flocking
in one huge roiling mass
of raging hormonal insanity
preteens to twenty-somethings
alerted online, on phones
to create havoc together
a youth wilding
a teen takeover
flash crowds run amok
in Orlando, DC, Pensacola
a fatality on the 4th
ten kids shot and 
where are the parents
now that their children
are hospitalized
or dead?


Mickey J. Corrigan writes about death. A lot. It's kind of her thing. Poetry chapbooks include Days' End (Main Street Rag) which takes place in a fictional Florida suicide parlor, and Final Arrangements, a series of poems about burial practices around the world (Prolific Press). No Guns Left Behind (Cyberwit) shares a chronology of school shootings in poetic form. Mickey lives in the Sunshine State, where crime and bad deaths abound. Her latest novel is Lazy Palms (Cyberwit, 2026) about an experimental euthanasia trailer park.

Saturday, December 07, 2019

ALL CLEAR

by Dawn Corrigan




A sleepy morning in Pensacola
I'm almost an hour late
putting on the coffee
and bringing my husband his pills

he takes the dogs out
and I sit with my laptop
to look at social media
#naspensacola trending

the Naval Air Station
second largest of our area’s
many military bases
six miles south of us

I go out to tell him
four dead, one the shooter
eight others injured
including two sheriffs

we sit on the stoop
drinking our coffee
cloudy and 64 degrees
in Myrtle Grove today

the neighbors’ sycamore
is almost bare
and our walkways are
covered with oak leaves

though just as many
remain in the trees
one of the mysteries
of the heritage oaks

a disembodied male voice
fills the air
it bounces from the trees
reverberates and echoes

we know it’s from NAS
but can’t understand
what it says
then another voice speaks

the friendly female voice
that makes announcements
over the intercom
at Myrtle Grove Elementary

half a block away
we’re been listening to her
for three years
normally she’s calm

and soothing
an intercom champion
but there’s a new edge
in her voice today

“I wanted to let you know
we’re all clear
and you can take your students
out to play.

We’re all clear
and everything’s okay.
We’re all clear!
Everyone have a nice day.”


Dawn Corrigan works in the affordable housing industry in Pensacola, FL and serves as assistant editor at Otis Nebula.