PLEASE

by William Aarnes

poetry makes nothing happen 

          —W.H. Auden 

 

poetry is never really part of anything 

          —John Koethe 

 

It can kill a man. 

          —Wallace Stevens 

 

                         It is difficult

to get the news from poems

          yet men die miserably every day

                                            for lack

of what is found there. 

          —William Carlos Williams 

 

Of course, there are other ways 

to kill—a knee pressed down 

on a neck; a quick, hard shove 

 

off a subway platform; a swerve 

onto a sidewalk; a brick 

dropped from a roof; the slow, 

 

sure work of something tasteless 

stirred into a sauce; a knife  

stuck through a partner’s heart... 

 

—but guns are so easy to have  

on hand they’ve help us fall  

into the habit of reaching for them 

 

to win lost arguments  

or end marriages or conclude 

our own lives by aimless firing 

 

into crowds.  Having guns around, 

has moved us to elect whoever  

will pass and keep in force  

 

permissive laws meant to insure  

we’ll need guns to defend each other  

from gunfire.   

 

                       So can someone  

 

please post the poem everyone 

(even readers who prefer 

firing guns to reading)  

 

will want to share with friends  

because the poem’s so compelling  

about how we need justices 

 

who think laws must meet 

standards suggested by the phrase  

“well regulated militia” 

 

and (in a brilliant burst  

of well-targeted words)    

about how it’s criminal  

 

not to make crimes committed  

with guns the responsibility  

of not only the culprits but also  

 

the weapons’ makers and dealers? 

 

Please, someone, that poem.  

 

Stop me from buying a gun. 

William Aarnes lives in New York.

AFTERIMAGE

by Cathleen Cohen

Portrait of Kaylin Johnson (KJ) painted by Cathleen Cohen for the Johnson family as part of the Soul Shots Project the mission of which is to bring attention to and memorialize the lives lost and tragically altered due to gun violence. KJ was shot and killed in Philadelphia in July 2021.

Painting KJ’s portrait, I peer

at an image of this beautiful boy, shot

in his parked car, waiting

 

to ferry friends to soccer practice.

His mother sends photos that capture

his smile, his jaunty shoulders.

 

I can tell he was quick

with jokes, sparking others.

His mother says he’d jump 

to carry heavy bags 

for older neighbors,

even strangers.

 

The boy who shot him

was a stranger.

Afterimage is illusion.

The brain persists in seeing

what’s removed.

 

Sometimes color memory

is repressed,

sometimes brighter.

 

I cry when I take up the brush.

What about skin tone?

Reference photos lack 

saturation

and I never met him.

Or background?

 

Brick red for urban houses?

Cobalt for sky—something

hopeful?

Cathleen Cohen was the 2019 Poet Laureate of Montgomery County, PA. A poet, painter and teacher, she created the We the Poets program for children. Her poems appear in journals such as Apiary, Baltimore Review, East Coast Ink, North of Oxford, One Art Journal, Passager, Philadelphia Stories, Poetica, River Heron Review, and Rogue Agent. She authored Camera Obscura (Moonstone Press), Etching the Ghost (Atmosphere Press) and Sparks and Disperses (Cornerstone Press). Her artwork is on view at Cerulean Arts Gallery.