ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL OF TEARS

by W. Barrett Munn

In four days, it will be November, 
and the expected temperature for today
here in Tulsa is 88 degrees Fahrenheit—
an obscene number so near Halloween.
The good news is we have no water to drink,
this I read on a sign 
held up by a thirsty lawn whose brown 
is this season’s fashion statement.

Drill, baby, drill says the untrained actor, 
the miscreant trying to get us to self-destruct.
Avoidance is a technique of psychological 
origins, a thrill for the adoring crowds
who no longer care how much damage
is done as long as they can hurt someone else
more—like a dentist without gas or Novocaine—
Drill, baby, drill. 

W. Barrett Munn is a graduate of The Institute of Children's Literature where he studied writing under Larry Callen. His adult poetry has appeared in The New Verse News a number of times, in print editions of Awakenings Review and Copperfield Review Quarterly, a printed edition of Sequoia Speaks, and online in Volney Road Review, Speckled Trout Review, Book of Matches, San Antonio Review, and many more. He lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

ST. FRANCIS IN TULSA

by Anne Harding Woodworth

Shot and killed on the campus of Saint Francis Health System in Tulsa on June 1 were (clockwise from top left) patient William Love, physician Preston Phillips, receptionist Amanda Glenn, physician Stephanie Husen. —KOAM, June 2, 2022.

Four makes it mass murder.

But 4 doesn’t compare to 10 or 21

or 26, except that it does.

Brother Sun, shine on them.

Four names in Tulsa

tragically forgotten as coffins

continue to be interred elsewhere.

Mother Earth, hold them all.

Four gunned down

by a brand-new semi-automatic,

all shiny and eager.

Brother wind, evaporate the tears.

Three were in the gunner’s way,

only the fourth was sought—

for revenge against a healer

of pain. Pain infiltrates.

Pain torments the mind

as it does the body.

Sister Moon, light the darkness.

The gun is always there.

It waits. In a drawer.

In a case. On a coffee table.

On a store shelf. Waits

to be bought by a child

until it waits no more,

rides to the hospital

and seeks to inflict pain

on the one who seeks to end it

and the ones who seek to live,

gunned down by a brand-new

semi-automatic, shiny and eager.

Sister Water, write the names.

 

Anne Harding Woodworth is the author of a seventh book of poetry, Trouble, which received the 2022 William Meredith Award for Poetry. Her eighth book, Gender: Two Novellas in Verse, will appear in October.

IT IS THE CLOUDS

by Lindsay Adkins

As soon as I’ve said it I think—

No, that is wrong.

We are eating dinner at the pub, outside

(because COVID)

while rain pelts the tent over our heads,

rushes down the open sides in small rivers,

and thunder stomps across the horizon.

All the things I would gather in my arms

and shove back into the barrel if I could.

My daughter is afraid of the thunder

and asks for a hug. “Demands”

might be a better word choice.

She isn’t yet two, doesn’t know

the different shades of language.

I explain to her it is just the clouds

banging into one another

like legos in her little fists.

Bang bang, she says.

Bang bang.

Everyone at the table laughs.

 

But even as I am saying the words

I think no, that isn’t quite right.

Something to do with lightning,

the sound of air cooling,

counting the seconds

from flash to boom

to find the distance between you

and the bolt.

I have oversimplified it.

You should ask your uncle sometime, I say.

The one who’s a meteorologist.

Bang bang, she says, pounding

her hands together,

already sure in her understanding.

 

My husband’s sister looks at her phone

and sighs.

Another shooting, she says.

In Tulsa. Not a school, a medical building.

 

I wonder if, when I write this poem,

as I know I will,

the rain will be small coins,

or bullets.

Or just rain.

Rain is, after all, rain—

Any good meteorologist will tell you so.

Having spent all our metaphors and similes

for guns and their blooms already,

we go back to our fries and beers.

Bang, my daughter whispers. Bang.

The lightning flashes, and I begin counting:

How long until this word

means something else to her?

Lindsay Adkins is a writer from Western MA whose work has appeared in Electric Lit, Narrative, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, great weather for MEDIA, Frontier Poetry, and So to Speak Journal, among others. She is a recipient of the Amy Award from Poets & Writers, the Phyllis B. Abrahms Award in Poetry, and an Author Fellowship from the Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. She has an MFA from Stony Brook Southampton. 

THE COVER UP

by Charles Rammelkamp

After the Tulsa Race Massacre in 1921, whole neighborhoods such as the Greenwood district were destroyed. Photograph: Universal History Archive/Getty Images via The Guardian, May 30, 2021.

“Every year it was one of the most stolen books from the Tulsa library system. Every year I would send them a new box.” —Scott Ellsworth, Death in a Promised Land: The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921

In the late fifties I was teaching history 

at Booker T. Washington High in Tulsa 

when I told my students 

about the massacre in 1921.

“The whites came over the tracks,

machine guns blazing, wiped out Greenwood,

probably more than three hundred dead.”

In fact, I told them, they’d used this building,

Booker T. High, as a hospital for colored folks.

“I don’t believe that!” one of my students shouted,

a pool hustler named Don Ross.

“How come don’t nobody know nothing about it, Mr. Williams?”

But I remember. I was sixteen,

fighting next to my father,

trying to save our building, our business,

Williams Confectionery, down the block

from our other business, Dreamland Theater,

corner of Greenwood and Archer.

The whites finally overwhelmed us.

They marched me down Greenwood,

my arms reaching for empty sky.

I watched a white boy running from our house,

a fur coat belonging to my mother 

clutched to his chest like the pelt

of some animal he’d just killed.

Next day I showed Don Ross the pictures,

charred corpses and burned-out buildings,

took him to meet other survivors.

How come don’t nobody know nothing?

I told Ross: “Because the killers

are still in charge of this town, boy.”

Author's Note: My source for the true story of W.D. Williams is Tim Madigan's "American Terror" in The Smithsonian.

Charles Rammelkamp is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore. Two full-length collections were published in 2020: Catastroika from Apprentice House and Ugler Lee from Kelsay Books. A poetry chapbook, Mortal Coil, was published earlier this year by Clare Songbirds Publishing.

THESE DAYS

by Gil Hoy

Robert Bates, a white reserve deputy in Tulsa County, Oklahoma, has been charged with second-degree manslaughter for fatally shooting Eric Harris, who was unarmed and pinned down by multiple police officers, during an April 2 sting operation, Tulsa World reported. Bates, a 73-year-old reserve deputy, yelled that he was going to use his Taser, before he fired a single shot from his actual gun. Immediately after firing, Bates shouted, "I shot him! I'm sorry." Harris then exclaimed, "He shot me. He shot me. Oh my god. I'm losing my breath." Police officers responded, "You shouldn't have fucking ran!" and "Fuck your breath!" Bates isn't an active member of the police force, Tulsa World's Dylan Goforth reported. He's an insurance executive who volunteers during his free time as a reserve deputy, which is made up of about 130 people total. Many of the people in the reserve, including Bates, also donate equipment to the sheriff's office, including guns, stun guns, vehicles, and even the sunglasses cameras that recorded the shooting.  —Vox.com

These Days

  You need not
  necessarily be

a Real police officer

   to be One.

Millionaire
Insurance Company
Executives
Can pay to

Ride around Playing cop
in Tulsa Oklahoma

 and in lots of other Cities,

   with Guns
   and Tasers too!

And if you happen to have

the understandable misfortune
 
    to reach for the wrong weapon,
Due To your lack of training,

And you grab the Gun
(which you thought was
a Taser)

and Shoot and Kill
   another
Unarmed Black man,

Maybe you can beat the rap

So long as you mind your manners
are courteous
and say:

  Oh, I shot him. I'm sorry.

But it likely
will not help your case

if a Real Deputy
on the scene

says to the Bleeding
     Dying Man

You fucking ran. Shut the fuck up.


Gil Hoy is a regular contributor to The New Verse News.  He is a Boston trial lawyer and studied poetry at Boston University, majoring in philosophy. Gil started writing his own poetry and fiction a year ago.  Since then, his poems and fiction have been published in multiple journals, most recently in Third Wednesday, Stepping Stones Magazine, The Potomac and The Zodiac Review.

OKKKLAHOMA

by Chris O’Carroll

The Daily Cartoon by Emily Flake, The New Yorker

Okkklahoma, where the white frat boys think hate is great,
And black guys swing in the songs they sing
’Cause their campus is a lynchpin of the state.
Okkklahoma, where the Klan was strong in ’21
When Tulsa burned, and no one learned,
So “hang ’em from a tree” still sounds like fun.

We know we’re the heirs of Jim Crow.
If it weren’t for that damn video
EN EYE GEE GEE
EE AR is something we’d feel free
To go on sayin’,
And we’d feel fine.  Okklahoma!
But just one K, OK?


Chris O’Carroll used to live in Kansas, and has performed at comedy clubs in Oklahoma.  He doesn’t expect to be invited back any time soon.