SHE WAS NOT MY PATIENT

by Kelley White

Philadelphia toddler dies after shooting herself in the eye with father’s unsecured gun: police. —New York Post, April 8, 2024

But I don’t want to give her name
or the specifics of her case. I don’t want
to invade her family’s privacy. They have already
suffered more than I can imagine. Worse, I’m a grandmother, I can
imagine it. Have imagined it. Have seen other children 
shot. So many. Too many. I will not list their names or ages
only, imagine, this one shot by his brother over a video
game, this one shot by his friend during a game
of spin-the-bottle, this one ‘playing,’ this one
angry for a moment. This one whose grandmother
claimed the gun was safe. Oh, my dear ones
how much I imagine. I see your five year
old hands wrapped around the barrel.
I see the gun tossed casually on a
couch cushion, the gun left on top
of the refrigerator. The gun
on the dashboard of the
abandoned car. I hear
the shots, sometimes,
when I leave the clinic
for lunch. I see the 
crossing guard so
careful with her
charges at the
school just down
the road. I see
the children’s
faces. Their
hands on 
a trigger, 
my own 
old
empty 
hands. 

Pediatrician Kelley White has worked in Philadelphia and New Hampshire. Poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Rattle and JAMA. Her most recent chapbook is A Field Guide to Northern Tattoos (Main Street Rag Press.) Recipient of 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant she is Poet in Residence at Drexel’s Medical School. Her newest collection, No. Hope Street, was recently published by Kelsay Books.

WAR SONGS AND OTHER LAMENTS

by Adele Evershed

In the quiet of a collective breath-holding / Ladies Night / accidentally played on the radio / so an Israeli spokesman / delivered words / about exacting a price from Iran / to the throb of a disco beat 

I listened to the ballistic bass / and retorting trumpets / cut with words of war / as if this was a movie / the music an ironic middle finger / to the inevitability / of the end of the world / and it seemed like another sign / in a week of medieval omen 

After / the BBC made no mention of their mistake / Johnnie Walker just played the song / so we could all ignore / our electric slide / toward a bigger conflict / since Kool & The Gang / insisted everything would be alright 

And if it really was 'ladies night,' that might be true / if women were in charge / drones would be used / to make sure daughters got home safely / and sons would be iron-domed / so they didn't lay down precious lives / because they belonged to one tribe / or another

Instead all we can do is watch the sky unnaturally darken and try to remember how to breathe

Adele Evershed is a Welsh writer who now lives in America. Her poems and flash fictions have appeared in Grey Sparrow Journal, Anti Heroin Chic, Gyroscope, Janus Lit, and many other places. Adele has been nominated for the Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize for poetry and short fiction. She has published two poetry chapbooks, Turbulence in Small Places (Finishing Line Press) and The Brink of Silence (Bottlecap Press). Adele has published a novella-in-flash, Wannabe (Alien Buddha Press), and a short story collection Suffer/Rage (Dark Myth Publisher).

NEXT WEEK—DEO VOLANTE

by Joan Leotta

I’m supposed to drive to Raleigh,

2.5 hours from here and stay 

in a hotel alongside a creek

that sometimes floods

(as does the creek behind my house), 

to immerse myself in 

a sea of poety.

 

All of these plans could 

be swept away by the winds

and water of the pending hurricane.

 

So, why do I still plan?

Life had  taught me

all can change sooner than

the weatherman predicts,

sooner than my doctor thinks.

In an instant, crossing the street,

or stumbling on a sidewalk crack,

a new virus,

waiting at a bus stop

shopping in my favorite grocery

Someone’s car, my clumsiness,

germs, someone’s gun fueled anger,

all of these can take me

to the “other side.”

I know because my son

was hit by a car on a night 

he had plans,

so as I plan, I add, God Willing,
Deo Volante, to my notes,

knowing all could end now

but not worrying because once I step

to that other side, there will 

be loved ones who await me there.

Joan Leotta. Author, Story Performer

HOW DO YOU DEFINE AN ENDING?

by Mark Danowsky

“Never-Ending Road” painting by Elizabeth Kenney

After three years, The New York Times announces that close coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic is coming to an end.

What has ended, I wonder,
And what has not?
 
So many with prolonged illness
Know the battle rages on 
 
And those soon to fall ill
And those who will fall ill
 
I count myself 
Among the lucky 
 
Recall my sureness
That I would not survive
 
Of course, few foresee
The deft hand of death 
 
His scythe, at times, the edge
Of visible—a bullet 
 
Stops the heart 
Without just cause
 
The needle droops 
In a useless arm 
 
Tires spin on ice
And metal crushes metal
 
A cloud opens up 
For tears to flood

Mark Danowsky is Editor-in-Chief of ONE ART: a journal of poetry. He is author of the poetry collections As Falls Trees (NightBallet Press), JAWN (Moonstone Press), Violet Flame (tiny wren lit), and Meatless (Plan B Press). Recent poems in Red Ogre Review, Green Ink Review, The Broadkill Review, anti-heroin chic, Harpy Hybrid Review, Otoliths, and elsewhere.

43: ODE TO THE ORIGINAL HOONIGAN

by Jennifer Elise Wang

in Memory of Ken Block

 
I could smell the burning rubber
When I watched videos of you
Racing through the streets of San Fran
As if it’s the Daytona International Speedway
(Except you turn in all sorts of ways, not just left).
You could hit the dirt too,
And I think I still have sand in my hair
From when I watched you in Austin
Racing guys like yourself,
Former boarders and bikers
Who found a new thrill behind the wheel.
We joked, “With age, comes the cage,”
But you never restricted yourself.
Like the engines of your Fords, Subarus, and Audis,
You pushed your own body to the limits
On concrete, dirt, water, and snow.
Now, I think if there is a Heaven,
The angels would have a hard time
Keeping you in one spot.

Jennifer Elise Wang (she/they) is a non-binary femme in STEM from Dallas, Texas. When she's not doing neuroscience research, she enjoys writing, dancing, and learning how to skateboard and snowboard.  She has been published in The New Verse News, FERAL, Exist Otherwise, and ev0ke.

NUCLEAR WASTE

by Charles Rammelkamp

Ukraine has initiated a defensive strategy for the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, one of the most radioactive places on Earth, which lies on the shortest path between Russia and Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv. Photo: A Ukrainian border guard on a joint patrol with the Ukrainian police inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. —The New York Times, January 22, 2022

“It doesn’t matter if it’s contaminated,

or if nobody lives here,” Yuri declared,

responding to the unspoken skepticism 

in the sheen of the reporter’s dark eyes.

“It’s our territory, our country,

and we have to defend it.”

Shouldering his Kalashnikov, Yuri patrolled 

the snowy fields of the Chernobyl zone;

winter in northern Ukraine.

“I remember reading about the Soviets

parading the children on May Day 

through the swirl of radioactive dust

right after the accident 

to try to make us—and the world—believe 

nothing serious had happened.

Thank goodness I wasn’t alive then.

“Pripyat’s a ghost town now;

used to be the biggest city in the area.

You can still see the old Soviet propaganda –

a sign extolling the virtues of nuclear energy.

‘Let the atom be a worker, not a soldier.’”

Hunching his shoulders, as if to toss away his anger,

shifting the rifle, Yuri went on:

“Now we don’t know 

what will kill us first,

the virus, radiation, or Putin’s bombs.”

 

Charles Rammelkamp is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore, where he lives with his wife Abby. He contributes a monthly book review to North of Oxford and is a frequent reviewer for The Lake, London Grip, Misfit Magazine, and The Compulsive Reader. A poetry chapbook, Mortal Coil, was published in 2021 by Clare Songbirds Publishing and another, Sparring Partners, by Moonstone Press. A full-length collection, The Field of Happiness, will be published in 2022 by Kelsay Books.

REFLECTION

by Greer Gurland

Mike Hoffman, 27, was ejected from a Jeep and killed by a drunk driver in New Hampshire Tuesday afternoon, authorities said. Photo Credit: Facebook/Mike Hoffman —Middlesex Daily Voice, July 7, 2021.

When I woke today, someone had died.

A driver drunk. 

The car rolled over and the others are alive, 

but not the son of the gym teacher.

Mr, Hoffman.

Mr. Hoffman does not write poetry or songs

far as I know.

He’s not Shakespeare but who's to say 

who loved more? 

What will he do now? What will he do?

I know. Be still 

kinder to the children. 

He will eek it out, give more, and mark 

the joy in open eyes. The rain will cover 

the windows covered with metal bars

but not enough. 

So funny, but before that, during the night, 

I spoke of my parents 

in the past tense

as if to convince myself I will survive.

Author's Note: Mr. Hoffman is a teacher at my son’s new school which serves kids with special needs. Although I have yet to meet Mr. Hoffman, I can tell from the staff’s grief that Mr. Hoffman is beloved.

Greer Gurland is a graduate of Harvard College (‘91) where she was Managing Editor of The Harvard Advocate and lucky enough to study with Seamus Heaney. She recently returned to writing and earned her MFA. She has two chapbooks: It Just So Happens …Poems to Read Aloud (Finishing Line Press 2018) and In the crowded future (Finishing Line Press 2021). Most recently, Greer was a finalist for the Moon City Book Prize.

FOR DAUNTE WRIGHT

by Rebecca Surmont

Video still from KARE 11 TV·via The New York Times, April 13, 2021.

Again. Again a gun.

When can we end what has begun?

Another day, another gun

goes off by “accident” but a gun

needs a hand ready on its silver gun-

metal finish to pour all its gun

fear into. so much fear we grab a gun

and run or hide, flip upside-down in gun-

smoke circling all those bodies. gun-

ned down bodies, dark as gun

powder and turned to ash. our gun

grey eyes stunned by gun

slinging guardians, a shogun

in blue who will protect me but not you. gun

dogs sniffing the streets and gun-

less dreamers snuffed to sleep at gun-

points undeterred in finding live targets. a gun-

fight never has a winner. i do not understand the gun-

ned down making hard history or gun

stock rising, the real people at the end of the gun-

play left to bow under a white curtain. Gun

again. Gone again. 

 

Rebecca Surmont is a poet from Minneapolis, MN, whose work has been in Silver Birch Press, The Southwest Journal, and the book Seasons by Trolley Car Press. 

HALO

by Linnet Phoenix

for Romain Grosjean

I know the angels of November.

Those that hover as low cloud

over the undulating motorways

on pre-darkened autumnal evenings.

 

I have felt their wings catch me

as my car was clipped left rear

by an undertaking Ford Scorpio.

 

A terrifying loss of control

as my steering wheel grew teeth

snapped at my wrists,

spun hard and fast

lock-end left to lock-end right.

 

Time itself moved to slow motion

as the seconds screamed with me.

At 90 miles per hour

the car should have flipped and rolled,

a steel gymnast on a tarmac mat.

 

Yet we commandeered three lanes

bucked and shied like a bronco

released fresh out the crush.

 

After eight wild swings

I came to rest in hard shoulder,

the line of headlights waited

an audience stood well back.

 

My fingers were melded on

a becalmed steering wheel.

It happened twenty years ago.

 

Today, watching Bahrain footage

I saw his car flung in the barrier,

torn in half, engulfed in a fireball.

 

The red flags of safely raised

as he walked out the flames

with only burns to his hands.

 

A titanium halo hailed his saviour.

I wondered if they stole his voice

for just an hour, as they did mine.

Linnet Phoenix is a poet who currently resides in North Somerset, England. She has been writing poetry for years. Her work has previously been published in ImpSpired Magazine, Heroin Love Songs, Punk Noir Magazine, Open Skies Quarterly, and others. She has poems upcoming in Poetica Review, Dreamscape (Open Skies), and ImpSpired. She also enjoys horse-riding in rainstorms.

NOT

by Laura Rodley





It’s not OK that Covid lurks
on sheet metal, lingers in lungs,
six hour window between tenants
in vacation rentals, disinfecting all
surfaces, holding onto our face masks.
It’s not OK I cannot see the stranger’s
face to know what they are saying,
who they are, if they might be safe or not.
It’s not OK that school might not
start up again and all rights of passage,
hallmarked by the start of school
in September, college, the rights of passage
are now given over to the power
of the internet, now zoomed into outer
space—are we being recorded? Who is
mapping our thoughts? It is as though
all the ways we knew how to live
and be kind, follow the markers, each right
of passage has left us with an earth
that’s flat, no longer round: what if Columbus
never sailed the seas, he drowned in them,
it was someone else who discovered America
and it was not someone looking for gold.
It was discovered by accident,
and no one was taken prisoner.

Laura Rodley, Pushcart Prize winner, is a quintuple Pushcart Prize nominee, and quintuple Best of Net nominee. Finishing Line Press nominated her Your Left Front Wheel Is Coming Loose for a PEN L.L.Winship Award and Mass Book Award. FLP also nominated her Rappelling Blue Light for a Mass Book Award. Former co-curator of the Collected Poets Series, until Covid-19, Rodley taught the As You Write It memoir class for 12 years.  She edited and published As You Write It, A Franklin County Anthology volumes I-VI, also nominated for a Mass Book Award. Latest books Turn Left at Normal by Big Table Publishing and Counter Point by Prolific Press.

RED HAT

by Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco


On our way north,
red brake lights
slam like doors.

We see debris
before we see anything
else:

a half-rolled license
plate, glass stars
ground into dirt.

The car is smashed
in on itself—rain
streaks along each

shattered window. A man
bends

down with his hands flat
on his thighs

to see inside,
his shoulders

tight. Someone has put out
flares.

The thing I can’t
believe

is the man’s MAGA
hat, clean like it is new,
holding the rain up

off his face.
I have to read it twice
to get it’s not

a joke, and then
it aches

and I’m ashamed,
the afterimage of the hat

and the wrecked car

drifting with me
all day long
like floating leaves.

Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco lives in California and co-edits One Sentence Poems. Her chapbooks Various Lies and Lion Hunt are available from Finishing Line Press and forthcoming from Plan B Press, respectively.

TO HUMANITY'S LEADERS AS CHRISTMAS APPROACHES

by George Salamon

You do not hear others.
You listen to voices inside yourselves,
Voices crazy with the sanity of greed,
Inspired by the magic of power.
You nurse profane dreams of
Treacheries and lies, never cringing,
Navigating toward escapes from your motives,
While neither God nor man blocks your evasions.
Your end will arrive, by accident or error,
But with it, no Peace on Earth.


George Salamon lives and writes in St. Louis, MO.

THE WATER PARK IN AUGUST

by Melissa Fite Johnson






I. Before

After Kansas City soccer, Children’s Mercy
Park, we drive south for home, two hours away.
The world’s tallest water slide looms at Schlitterbahn,
lit green at night, the spiral walk-up staircase
Godzilla’s head and body, the slide its tongue
unfurling.  Who would ride that monstrosity,
my husband and I joke, and it is a joke, menacing
as that structure is, because we’re safe in our car,
or feel we are at least, our breakable bodies and soft flesh
dashing down the highway in our aluminum bubble.

II. After

I imagine the boy they found in the pool
also felt safe, at least initially, strapped in his raft.
Higher than Niagara; faster than a cheetah;
steeper than any ski slope!  The website called the slide
jaw-dropping.  The website called the slide
gut-wrenching.  I shouldn’t read the stories.  They don’t
bring him back.  They all show the same picture:
brown eyes freckled nose dark hair baseball cap.
Baseball bat on his shoulder.  Ears like mine, elfish
tips that stick out, tinged red from the sun warming his back.

Melissa Fite Johnson’s first collection, While the Kettle’s On (Little Balkans Press, 2015), won the Nelson Poetry Book Award and is a Kansas Notable Book.  Her poems have appeared in Valparaiso Poetry Review, Rust + Moth, Broadsided Press, velvet-tail, and elsewhere.  Melissa teaches English and lives with her husband in Kansas.

SELF-DRIVING TESLA INVOLVED IN FATAL CRASH

by Don Hogle

Kazimir Malevich. Suprematist Composition: White on White (Oil on Canvas, 1918) The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) 1935 Acquisition confirmed in 1999 by agreement with the Estate of Kazimir Malevich and made possible with funds from the Mrs. John Hay Whitney Bequest (by exchange).

“Neither autopilot nor the driver noticed the white side of the tractor-trailer against a brightly lit sky, so the brake was not applied.” —TESLA Blog, June 30, 2016

There were no casualties this morning
when Bluetooth failed to connect
an iPod to the Onkyo receiver
that sends the French news
to speakers in my living room.

Nor did the Mac screen shatter
when a pop-up popped up
with the fatal words Cannot
get mail.

In the blue Pacific, rainbow fish
swim in and out of coral
encrusted bone somewhere
near where Amelia dropped
from the sky.

A crew of astronauts burst
once from their capsule like stars
in a meteor shower, glittering
briefly in their yellow-red descents
over Texas and Louisiana.

Madame Curie may have failed
to notice the fatigue in her bones,
but she saw a faint light glowing
from the tubes she carried
in her pockets.

And those at MoMA,
who might have missed
the cool white square tilted
on the warm white background
of a canvas painted by Malevich,
were just bemused by what they saw.

Don Hogle is a poet, blogger and brand and communications strategist living in Manhattan. Poems have appeared recently in Mud Season Review, Minetta Review, Blast Furnace, Shooter, Bethlehem Writers Roundtable and TheNewVerse.News among others.  He was a finalist in the Northern Colorado Writers’ 2015 Poetry Contest. 

IT'S CONSTITUTIONAL (WE'RE NOT WELL REGULATED)

by William Aarnes

Cartoon by Steve Stegelin, Charleston City Paper,  July 25, 2012

“For more than a hundred years, the answer was clear, even if the words of the amendment itself were not. The text of the amendment is divided into two clauses and is, as a whole, ungrammatical: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” The courts had found that the first part, the “militia clause,” trumped the second part, the “bear arms” clause. In other words, according to the Supreme Court, and the lower courts as well, the amendment conferred on state militias a right to bear arms—but did not give individuals a right to own or carry a weapon. Enter the modern National Rifle Association. . . . ” —Jeffrey Toobin, The New Yorker, December 17, 2012 (i.e. after Newtown)

“The most recent national poll of NRA members that we could find, done in January 2013 by Johns Hopkins University, found that 73.7 percent of the members supported requiring background checks for all gun sales.” —PolitiFact Wisconsin, March 18, 2015

An accidental death here and there,
an impulsive murder-suicide,

a massacre of moviegoers,
a gunning-down of worshippers,

a slaughter of children in classrooms,
a lucrative trade in weapons

all being in keeping with the preservation
of our crazed State,

the need of our People
to shoot each other

shall not be infringed.


 William Aarnes lives in South Carolina.  His work has appeared recently in Field, Heron Tree, and South 85.

PRESUMPTION

by Catherine Wald

Image source: NY Daily News

So many are the barriers we cross –
mountains, rivers, doorways in
and doorways out – we can’t
pause at every junction
to ponder the alternatives,
consider every sharp stake
we might be impaled on; every
body of water eager to swallow
us up; every potential mechanical
malfunction in a world dominated
by machines.

What would life be like if,
every time you drove across a
train track, you had to wonder
what your kids would do without
you, how your gas tank might im-
plode on impact, who you are likely
to kill without meaning any harm?

What we presumed:  SUVs
are invulnerable, trains
are stoppable, each of us
has the right to traverse
any obstacle that blocks
our path.

Were we wrong?


Catherine Wald has frequently taken the Metro North train from New York City to Valhalla. Her books include poetry (Distant, burned-out stars, Finishing Line Press, 2011), nonfiction (The Resilient Writer: Stories of Rejection and Triumph From 23 Top Authors, Persea Books, 2005) and a translation from French of Valery Larbaud’s Childish Things (Sun & Moon Press). Her poems have been published in American Journal of Nursing, Buddhist Poetry Review, Chronogram, Exit 13, Friends Journal, Jewish Literary Journal, The New Poet, Society of Classical Poets, The 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly andWestchester Review.

TRAGEDY IN ELMO, MO

by Anne Harding Woodworth

ELMO, Mo. AP, January 20, 2015 • A 9-month-old northwestern Missouri boy is dead after his 5-year-old brother playing with a handgun accidentally shot him in the head. Nodaway County Sheriff Darren White says the baby was pronounced dead at Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City just before noon on Monday. The Kansas City Star reports that emergency responders were called to a home in Elmo around 9 a.m. Monday after a 5-year-old found a loaded .22 caliber handgun and apparently was handling it when it fired. White says the bullet struck the 9-month-old, who was in a playpen. The sheriff says there is no reason to believe the shooting was anything other than an accident. 

There was every reason.

Stupidity.

The father was not there.
Absence.

The mother was in the kitchen.
Multi-task.

The baby was in the playpen.
Safety.

The five-year-old found the 22-caliber Magnum revolver.
Curiosity.

It was near a bed.
Paranoia.

It was loaded.
Paranoia.

He pulled the trigger.
Imitation.

The baby died inside his microcosm.
Innocence.

A gun killed a baby brother.
Insanity.


Anne Harding Woodworth is the author of five books of poetry and three chapbooks. She lives part-time in Washington, D.C., where she is a member of the Poetry Board at the Folger Shakespeare Library. The rest of the time, she is in the mountains of Western North Carolina.