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. 

WE ARE ALL IN THE GUTTER, BUT SOME OF US ARE LOOKING AT THE STARS OF INFOWARS

by Julie Steiner

Sandy Hook parents' lawyer says Alex Jones' phone leak contains 'intimate messages with Roger Stone' —Business Insider, August 5, 2022

Though “intimate” (you naughty thing)

need not mean "prurient,"

that word makes certain thoughts take wing

along a vulgar bent.

Your conscience frowns and shakes her head.

Although she’s tsked and clucked,

you hope these bad boys’ texts, when read,

show both completely fucked.

Julie Steiner is a pseudonym in San Diego, California. Besides The New Verse News, the venues in which Julie's poetry has appeared include the Able Muse Review, Rattle, Light, and The Asses of Parnassus.

WE LIKE OUR FREEDOM

by Ginny Lowe Connors

And our steaks—we like them rare.

Our vengeance bloody and loud. Lightning bolts

aimed at the heart. That thrill. That satisfaction

when our rage explodes.

 

Ask the six-year-olds of Sandy Hook.

Ask their parents. Or anyone from Ulvalde.

Ask the stuffed bunny left behind

on the bed, one ear bent and frayed.

 

Tissue paper parachutes

drifting over the wastelands of our freedom—

that’s what the prayers became

of those in the Pittsburgh synagogue

and in the Fort Worth Baptist Church.

 

Nobody asks about the anonymous workers

who come in afterward to clean up the blood.

In the schools, the churches, the nightclubs.

The homes, the offices. Grocery stores.

That sludge, that slurry of hatred, cold sweat, malice—

how long must the smell of it linger?

 

I myself cannot eat steak. I cannot free myself

from the vision of a little boy racing a school bus. 

Something is happening to the field of wildflowers

I used to carry in my chest, asters and daisies, bees.

Summer sunlight. I’m full of holes.

The hummingbirds are escaping.

 

 

Ginny Lowe Connors taught English in a public secondary school for many years. She is the author of four full-length poetry collections, including her latest poetry book Without Goodbyes: From Puritan Deerfield to Mohawk Kahnawake (Turning Point, 2021). Her chapbook Under the Porch won the Sunken Garden Poetry Prize, and she has earned numerous awards for individual poems. She is co-editor of Connecticut River Review and runs a small poetry press, Grayson Books.

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.

SEARCHING FOR A PRAYER

by Jacqueline Jules

400 Rounds of Ammunition Found at Pawnshop Connected to N.J. Killings: The police arrested the owner of the store in Keyport, N.J., on criminal weapons charges. [Their search] on Friday night … yielded six rifles, three handguns and one shotgun, in addition to the ammunition rounds, including hollow point bullets, which expand when they hit a target, according to officials. Three of the weapons were AR-15 style assault rifles, the same type of firearm used in the Sandy Hook, Las Vegas and Parkland mass shootings. —The New York Times, December 15, 2019

When the news buzzed on my phone:
6 Dead in Jersey City. Jewish Kosher Deli,
I was googling, searching for a prayer
to read Friday night at our yearly service
to remember the dead at Sandy Hook
with an invited speaker
who would tell our congregation
how little progress has been made
since those babies were gunned down
with the same kind of rifles
carried inside a kosher market
at the very moment I was searching
for a prayer, not too political
to read from the pulpit
at a service organized to keep
the memory of innocents alive.

Jacqueline Jules is the author of the poetry chapbooks Field Trip to the Museum, Stronger Than Cleopatra, and Itzhak Perlman’s Broken String, winner of the 2016 Helen Kay Chapbook Prize from Evening Street Press. Her work has appeared in over 100 publications including TheNewVerse.News, The Rising Phoenix Review, What Rough Beast, Public Pool, Rise Up Review and Gargoyle. She lives in Arlington, Virginia. 

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.

AVIELLE'S MOM

by George Held

The following statement by Jeremy Richman’s widow, Jennifer Hensel, was posted at the GoFundMe page created by Jennifer’s brother. It is the only authorized fundraising site for fundraising for Jennifer and her children. “Side by side since 1991, Jeremy and I walked a path of deep friendship, marriage, and parenthood. As you may know, our first born, our beautiful Avielle was murdered at Sandy Hook school in 2012. In 2013, we founded the Avielle Foundation to honor her life. Our second daughter, Imogen (4 years) and son Owen (2 years) brought a renewed sense of joy and hope to our lives. Imogen and Owen are imaginative, fun, caring, sweet, curious and RIDICULOUSLY loving. They are a true reflection of Jeremy and me. The work of the Avielle Foundation is meaningful. But my champion and the love of my life is the person who had every tool in the toolbox at his disposal. He succumbed to the grief that he could not escape. Now we also honor Jeremy through the continued work of our foundation. Our family is our true legacy. To parent our children without my champion shatters my heart and I will love my best friend forever.  I am grateful for your support and donations.”

You’ve lost your daughter,
Now your husband,
To the dark reaper
Who sowed death
Among the kids and staff
At Sandy Hook,
Sure as if he’d pulled
The trigger on Jeremy.

Who knew that more years
Would pass than Avielle’s age
Before Jeremy himself
Would pass on from
The hopelessness here
To wherever—we can
Never know—but life
Without Avielle,

In an uncaring nation
Of gun Nazis
Allowing no progress
On gun laws,
Was just too hard
To bear? And we now
Pray for you, Avielle’s mom
And Jeremy’s widow,

We pray for you.

George Held, a frequent contributor to TheNewVerse.News and other periodicals, has received ten Pushcart Prize nominations and published or edited twenty-two poetry books.

THE FABULISTS

by Devon Balwit

Alex Jones, whose InfoWars website is viewed by millions, says that the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre was an elaborate hoax invented by government-backed “gun grabbers.”Credit: Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York Times. “In three separate lawsuits—the most recent was filed on Wednesday in Superior Court in Bridgeport, Conn.—the families of eight Sandy Hook victims as well as an F.B.I. agent who responded to the shooting seek damages for defamation. The families allege in one suit, filed by Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder in Bridgeport, that Mr. Jones and his colleagues ‘persistently perpetuated a monstrous, unspeakable lie: that the Sandy Hook shooting was staged, and that the families who lost loved ones that day are actors who faked their relatives’ deaths.’” —The New York Times, May 23, 2018

In a post-truth world, your loved ones never died,
all 26 of them spirited back into bodies,
you, nothing more than performers of grief, hacks
for hire by unseen puppeteers. That pietà
where you held your six-year-old, confirming
his fatal wound, never happened, you expert
in manufacturing mourning. Your child’s brother
wonders how he can be told to doubt his memories,
wonders why anyone would suggest such an erasure.
Why would the President promise, I will never let
you down—but to the wrong ones, the deniers?
Fathers struggle to explain this to surviving children.
Mothers march grimly into the court house.
Twenty-six truths stand in stubborn admonishment.



Devon Balwit is a writer/teacher from the Pacific Northwest. 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.

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.

THIS TIME

by Heather Newman

A police officer directed a bystander off the crime scene on the Boston Common. JOSH REYNOLDS FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE, September 12, 2017

1.

On a mid-September afternoon
in historic Boston Common
multiple gunshots were fired
near the bandstand, among bystanders, a brazen act,
police called it, locals say this never happens in Boston,
                                    it’s a college town.
A nineteen-year-old Hyde Park man
was critically injured. The shooting triggered
chaos in one of the nation’s oldest parks.
Police chased a man into a trolley tunnel at Arlington station,
a gun was recovered, three are in custody.              
Police believe it was not a random act.
But this is not a poem about terrorists or home growns
or viable solutions for
public safety.
Authorities say an argument preceded the shooting,
all people involved in the incident are known to police
                                    and it’s unclear if it’s drug or gang related.
This is a poem
about those who dodge a bullet and
those who are not dead, yet


2.

She calls me crying, barely able to speak, and I fear the worst.
Twenty minutes before, we had been chatting. She was
                                    on a mission to discover
a farmers market. She loves her classes, her roommate.
I’m thrilled; this wasn’t her first choice of schools.
Please, God, don’t let it be rape.
She tells me she ran from gunfire but she’s safe, back in her dorm.
I’m relieved. School is in lockdown.            
On the internet. Looks like they caught the shooter.
She says she thought about playing dead instead of running.
We had discussed this right after Sandy Hook.
                                    I’m in New York City and I’ve never run from gunfire.
Twitter says two of the three suspects fled on mopeds.
Impossible, she says. Those guys on the red vespas were not the shooters.
Are you sure you want to get involved?
She spent hours at police headquarters, couldn’t sleep for days.
I flew her home for the weekend, took her shopping.
                                    Statistics say this shouldn’t happen to her again.


3.

“When you hear ‘active shooter,’ you run . . .”
this epidemic, these pleas, how many die before
                                    another one
“It sounded like fireworks . . .”
flags lowered, legislation, time for congress to enact
                                    another one
NRA, massacres, stranglers, bombers, revolutions
prove we can’t stop
another one  
“These are happening too much, these shootings,”
thoughts and prayers, in God we trust
                                    another one


4.

But back to the Common.
This story won’t be found on CNN or Fox News,
The New York Times or The Washington Post.
It was just another boy
not enrolled in a college, somewhere in critical condition.
And three unnamed others, who knew each other and were known to police;

                                    they were released the next day.

Heather Newman is an MFA candidate at The New School (NYC.) Her work has appeared in Voices from Here, Vol. II, TheNewVerse.News, The Potomac, Two Hawks Quarterly, Aji Magazine, Matter, Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop and eChook.

I AM FROM A TURBULENT WORLD

by Elizabeth S. Wolf




I am from Paris.
I am drinking café,
watching football, screaming
along with the band.
I am from Beirut, being
bombed for what I am not.
I am from Jerusalem, being
stabbed for who I am
and who I love.
I am from Abu Ghraib
and some callow American youth
has me down on all fours, wearing
a leash for a dog.
I am back from Iraq
home in Colorado Springs
gunned down at
Planned Parenthood.
I am from Bangladesh, being
hacked by an axe for blogging a story.
I am a young man from New Hampshire
beheaded for trying to understand
the story to tell.
I am from San Bernadino and I go to
a special school where today
we were having a party when
the bad men burst in.
I am from Sandy Hook Elementary School.
I am from kindergarten, learning
the belly of a ‘b’ goes this way
and the belly of a ‘d’ goes that way
and bullets go everywhere.
I am from Syria but I am
running for my life and if I
do not die along the way,
I don’t know where I will arrive.
I am the truth, fractured into
thousands of brilliant faceted carats.
I am the glare so bright that one
sliver of truth is blind to
all of the others.

I am from Paris. I am
the unnamed young man towing
a piano, by bicycle, so that I can play
John Lennon’s “Imagine”
in front of the Bataclan Theater.
I am the hope that someday you will join us
and the world will live as one.


Elizabeth S. Wolf has previously published poems in local anthologies (Merrimac Mic: Gleanings from the First Year; 30 Poems in November 2014; Amherst Storybook Project). She lives in MA and maintains a day job as a Technical Metadata Librarian.

AFTER SANDY HOOK, NEWTOWN

by Joan Colby

Crews have torn down the home of the man who killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Mass. The school was demolished in November, 2013. AP photo via Time, March 25, 2015.

Nothing will bring them back.
The shooter killed himself as well
So the marble hand of justice
Cannot signal. There’s no one left to punish
Except the building where it took place.
Halls of learning. Books and desks
Stained with the memory of what happened.
Then the house where he planned the monstrous
Acts of unreason. Nothing left but to
Tear it all down. To burn the ground where they stood
And then maybe in time to plant
Something green and tend it.
It seems reasonable, doesn’t it?

I can’t help but be reminded
Of my friend accidentally kicked
By her horse and then lay comatose
For weeks on the narrow ledge of dying.
Her husband in his grief
Had the horse killed. What else could he do?
What could relieve this? Nothing. Nothing.
She woke to the empty stall of loss.


Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, the new renaissance, Grand Street, Epoch, and Prairie Schooner. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, Rhino Poetry Award, the new renaissance Award for Poetry, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She was a finalist in the GSU Poetry Contest (2007), Nimrod International Pablo Neruda Prize (2009, 2012), and received honorable mentions in the North American Review's James Hearst Poetry Contest (2008, 2010). She is the editor of Illinois Racing News, and lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois. She has published 11 books including The Lonely Hearts Killers and How the Sky Begins to Fall (Spoon River Press), The Atrocity Book (Lynx House Press) and Dead Horses and Selected Poems from FutureCycle Press. Selected Poems received the 2013 FutureCycle Prize.  Properties of Matter was published in spring of 2014 by Aldrich Press (Kelsay Books). Two chapbooks are forthcoming in 2014: Bittersweet (Main Street Rag Press) and Ah Clio (Kattywompus Press). Colby is also an associate editor of Kentucky Review and FutureCycle Press. 

CANNIBAL KING,or EVERYWHERE IS SANDY HOOK

by Howie Good

God, if there is one,
must be a very old man
who sits on a stool
in the shade of a sidewalk tree,
now & again dozing off,
his stubbly chin
dropping onto his chest,
while not far away
bat-winged dogs
devour the schoolchildren
he’s just too full
to devour himself.


All proceeds from Howie Good's latest book of poetry,  Fugitive Pieces (Right Hand Press), go to the Food Bank of the Hudson Valley.

11,460

by George Held

Children killed by gun violence since the Newtown shooting.
From top: Alton and Ashton Perry, Leonard J. Smith Jr., Aaron Vu; Middle: Trashawn Jaylen Macklin, Tiana Ricks, Mia Lopez; Bottom: Antonio Santiago, Jaiden Dixon, Madison Dolford.
Image source: NBC News

That’s the number of once-living
Innocent persons killed by gunshots
In the year since Adam Lanza

Slaughtered 20 lambs and 6 shepherds
At Sandy Hook School one year ago.
Hard, and maybe futile, to make that

Number poetic. Say it: “11,460”
And by the time anyone might read
This piece, the number will be bigger.

That’s over 31 gun deaths per day,
114,600 per decade, or 10,000
More than the population of Green Bay, WI.

Adam Lanza’s name is immortal,
His victims will soon be anonymous.


An occasional contributor to The New Verse News, George Held occasionally blogs at www.georgeheld.blogspot.com

BOOK OF LOSS, ONE YEAR

by Shirley J. Brewer

In remembrance of December 14, 2012

Make the manual severe
in appearance: the cover dark,
a title deeply engraved.

Select paper that weighs
down the hand, every page
suffering between its peers

clothed in black type. Allow
an abundance of question marks,
the agony of white space.

Words confound. Include
birdsong, tulips in bloom,
strawberries, vanilla mist.

Call this book Newtown.
Say it softly. Families still weep.
Craters pock their hearts.

Wait, start over. Change the cover.
Choose pinks, blues, soft greens, yellows
for the children, their teachers.

Add pictures of the dead,
each in a favorite shirt or dress—
not the ones with bullet holes.

Let sweet memories repeat. Let grief
bleed into ink. Write one chapter at a time.
You will never reach the end.


Shirley J. Brewer is a poet, educator, and workshop facilitator. In addition to previous poems in The New Verse News, her poetry has appeared in The Cortland Review, Comstock Review, Passager, Innisfree Poetry Journal, and other publications. Her poetry chapbook, A Little Breast Music, was published in 2008 by Passager Books. A second book of poems, After Words, was published in 2013 by Apprentice House/Loyola University.

CROSSROADS

by Robin Sampson

There are new pedestrian crossings, traffic signals, turn arrows,
granite curbs, sidewalks. The weird little island in the road is gone.
The corner restaurant has another name, a new sign, as does
the coffee house next door, both closed overnight this past winter.
On one corner, a new spruce has been put in place across the street
from the older, stressed tree, and I wonder if both will be lit later this year.
It is hard to think ahead to more holidays. The laundromat is not as busy
anymore, though the liquor store is probably busier. This little village center,
with its bridge across the Pootatuck River, is busy landscaping the new normal.
Painful memories still cloud these streets. Some say they cannot, will not return,
and so they stay away. But some of us live here. To go just about anywhere,
we must pass by the firehouse, the school driveway, often many times a day.
This year, like many years passed, we sat at long tables in the station there,
eating fundraiser lobster with neighbors, without intrusion, and we could
almost forget. This little corner of town has never felt as much like home.
I’ve watched the snow melt, the trees leaf out, the flowers bloom,
just like they have every other year. I hope the new signals do their job,
hasten the flow of traffic at this intersection, site of overwhelming attention
just a season or so ago. We still harbor a scabbed-over hostility
to those pointing their lens noses too close, or well-meaning pilgrims
who just have to see for themselves. We brand our cars with green and white
magnetic stickers, tailgate the tourists when they slow down in front of . . .
to gawk, to leave flowersheartsangels, to take their pictures.
We still politely accept the condolences of customer service representatives
on the line when doing business over the phone. The kumbaya moment
is over, and we are back to squabbling amongst ourselves, voting down
the budget, and complaining in letters to the editor about things petty and not.
Outside the laundromat, I sit scribbling in a repurposed composition book
while my wash tumbles, and watch a great blue heron glide in through the trees
over the river. My body still reacts to the sound of an approaching helicopter. Muscles
tense, heart rate quickens. Across the parking lot, the lush green of late Spring
softens the edges. When the road work is finally done, I will walk the mile
from my house to this crossroads, push the button to cross, get a cup of coffee,
and sit by the river, watch the water, as I have so many times before.


Author’s note: “We live a half mile from the school and were home that morning. Our three grown children all went to that school, and it was part of our neighborhood. As I said, this is the first time sharing any of my writing about it publicly.”


Robin E. Sampson writes poetry, fiction, essays, etc. Her poetry's been published in The New Verse News, FeatherLIt, Bent Pin Quarterly, Connecticut River Review, Bitter Oleander. She lives in Sandy Hook, CT.

HIS NAME

by Andrea Marcusa

Image source: Mansfield News Journal

The most pointless thing of all was how he wasn’t allowed to have his name stitched on his school knapsack – strangers can steal a child that way.  So were those vaccinations against diphtheria, meningitis, polio and the morning vitamin he hated – a chewable pink bear.  Or that car seat he was made to sit in on rides to school, even though most of his friends no longer had to use one, so futile. But there was something about his name – he’d taught himself to write it all by himself when he was two. Wanted everyone to use his full name. Not a nickname, not a shortened version. A good strong one for a boy.  Greek, after an apostle, after a king, and his grandfather in Alaska.  But that morning in the classroom with them all scattered around--there was no way to tell--no trace of it anywhere on him. But inside the neck of his too big, long-sleeved striped jersey, a strange, gloved hand peeled back the collar where he was found limp and face down, and that’s when they spotted it -- in black markered script. Dear child, in those first minutes, even your name was gone, displaced by the one on a hand-me-down from your brother, now a fourth grader in a classroom on the other end of the school, where he was crouched trembling, hiding in the closet.

Andrea Marcusa's  work has appeared in The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, The Ontario Review, The Antigonish Review, Copper Nickel, NewSouth, and other publications. Her work appeared in the essay collection, In the Fullness of Time (Simon and Schuster). She was a finalist in the Ontario Review’s 2007 fiction competition and winner of the Antigonish Review 2008 Fiction competition. She divides her time between literary writing and working in the areas of health care and sustainable agriculture.  She lives in New York City with her husband, two sons and pet cockatiel, Turko.

777 MILES FROM SANDY HOOK ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

by J.M. Green

December 14, 2012

I.
Had lunch with Jim. It’d been like months. We shelved
work shit – talked girls, our little girls. A choice
unspoken. Something eyes and breaths just delved
into. His talk: importance of her voice
when boys round first base. Mine: importance of
her keeping track of mittens. We agreed
joyful and kind were virtues far above
“gifted.” By God our ladies better bleed
real empathy and social justice! Jim
shared family stuff he never shared before.
The secret turned to silence, not a grim
silence, but strong silence with dad rapport.
We laughed down Ludlow Avenue, both bugged
by Christmas pop songs. We shook hands then hugged.

II.
I drove off, pressed for time. This day was my
day – carpool pick up. We drive because of
school cut backs. More recession bullshit I
adjust my day for. News brooded above
the dashboard like a gray haze. Blindly I
fell in the carpool line at Heritage
Elementary. Not the same school some guy,
no, some fucking crazy psychopath barged
into killing our kids. A saved school for
now – thank God. Parents sat in their cars, I
saw, staring through their hazes. My car doors
opened – Audrey and the neighbor girls – I
switched channels quick. They jumped right into song
with Mariah’s Christmas wish. I stayed strong.


J.M. Green is the author of the chapbook Super Rich (Pudding House, 2008). His work is forthcoming or has been recently published in New Mirage Journal, Ginger Piglet, The Oklahoma Review, Cincinnati Magazine and other journals. Green is a librarian with the Wyoming Branch of The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County. He lives in West Chester, OH with his wife and daughter.