THE FINAL F%^#ING MASS SHOOTING (THAT WON’T BE BECAUSE THIS IS AMERICA)

Court Street and Clemens Street, Mount Clemens, Michigan, July 4, 2026, for Freedom 250

5 hospitalized, including 2 juveniles, after shooting during block party in Mount Clemens —CBS Detroit, July 5, 2026

by Ron Riekki

“If you’re not connected emotionally to a story,

then you’re dead.”

—Paul Feig

 

“Help is what he’s most short on tonight.”

—Raymond Carver,

“Stupid”

Driving to the Iowa Writers Workshop summer program,

 

I’m listening to the Rattle podcast; Tim Green asks a poet,

“How do you know when a poem is dumb?” or, at least,

that’s what it sounded like to me, so I leaned in, listening,

wanting to know when a poem is stupid, which, honestly,

is a good thing to know, when you have written some-

 

thing idiotic, and being able to recognize it, so I loved

the question, then realized, from the answer by the guest

that he’d asked, in fact, “How do you know when a poem

is done?”  And I know I’m done.  Listen, Michigan, I know

you’re one of the top places in the world for gun violence,

 

but I’m done.  I know we’ve had two $%^&ing mass shootings

in the last two days—5 shot on July 4, and 4 shot on July 5—

5 injured in Mount Clemens, at, yup, another block party, a 10-

-year-old girl shot, at 11:11 p.m., the final @#$%ing hour, because

the mass shooters won’t quit, are insane with rage, endlessly,

 

and I chatted with a waitress today and she’s dedicating her life

to reducing violence, works with domestic violence, but, also,

she’s a waitress, because of the pay, but she’s dedicated, and

I’m exhausted, and we exchange numbers, talking about how

men who want to reduce violence need to partner with women

 

who want to reduce violence, and I find out about another mass

shooting on July 5 at Madison Church in Grand Rapids, at

a goddamn church, because Michigan is a hydrogen jukebox,

and a deafening silence, and old news, and a good grief, and

a living oxymoron without the oxy-, low oxygen levels in

 

the brain.  And there’s a scene in Apocalypse Now, a movie

I watched for the first time when I was in the military,

staring at the screen, alone, my bunkmate’s piece-of-crap

TV, VHS, in horror, realizing I volunteered for this world

of hell, watching the film pre-Desert Storm, unknown future,

 

with a scene in the film where I stopped the tape, the only

scene where I rewound, the scene of the actor screaming,

“I’m not going, I’m not going, I’m not going!” because

it was me.  And then he gets pulled off the helicopter.

You’re going.  You’re going to die.  Fate.  Except, Michigan,

 

I’m done.  I’m dumb.  I’m not going.  I’m smart.  I’m done

with your dumb mass shootings, Michigan.  40% of Michigan

households own guns.  And I’m done with the suicides of

your children, Michigan.  I’m done with your husbands

killing your wives, Michigan.  I’m done with the story

 

of a dog accidentally setting off a shotgun and shooting

its owner, the multiple stories of that happening, more and more

knowing gun = dumb, because gun owners’ houses are filled with

suicides and homicides and are Far Side comic strip

madness that they choose.  Gun owners, Death awaits you.

 

Enjoy your guns.  I’m done.  I’m not going.  This is stupid.

 

The End.

Editor’s note: Ron Riekki covered all seventeen mass shootings in Michigan from July 4, 2025 through July 3, 2026 for The New Verse News.

Ron Riekki co-edited Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice. 

A SONNET FOR A CAPITALIST SOCIETY

by Claude Clayton Smith

But woke capitalism is a paper tiger. Companies embrace identity and cultural inclusion as a way to expand their market share to new communities while obscuring their raw political power and the ruthless underpinning realities of shareholder capitalism. Elites on the right, meanwhile, know very well that it is a paper tiger but are more than happy to play along with a shuck and jive that allows them to wield “woke” as a cudgel against the left—and for some voters, it does the vital job of stoking resentment. (Graphic by Brandon Celi) —Lydia Polgreen, The New York Times, July 12, 2023

They call us Homo sapiens but we

are no such thing. Homo consumo is what

we are—dumb dogs that chase our tails with glee

and gladly sniff the rank capitalist butt

that shits in the face that licks it, absolves itself

of sin, and crassly fouls America’s soul.

Got that? Harsh words, I know, knocked from the shelf

without Roget to soften. Life was whole

in early years on planet Earth—when all

survival meant was food and shelter, not

an endless senseless cycle of corporate gall.

Now comes a new human sort—Homo rot.

The economic life that fails to share

will never cure the ills that it lays bare.

Professor Emeritus of English, Ohio Northern University, Claude Clayton Smith is the author of eight books and co-editor/translator of four. His work has been translated into five languages, including Russian and Chinese. His first adventure as a solo editor—Gauntlet in the Gulf: The 1925 Marine Log & Mexican Prison Journal of William F. Lorenz, MD—was published in March of 2023. His degrees include an MFA from the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa.

ELECTION: 2016

by Wendy Taylor Carlisle

They’re handing it out—whatever it is.
And we’re taking it—exile, house arrest,
a wall, mass deportations, the molded,
melded, stretched and excised truth.
I hear some are taking it and buying the hat.
We might as well paint the country alizarin.
Other names for alizarin are Mordant Red
and Turkey Red. We should certainly paint
the country alizarin. Eventually,
we will want to get back to forming our
days with our hands. We will be unable
to move our fingers. Then we will want
to hear the new lies, the small stories
of the worms’ triumph. It will be too late.
I tell myself, “don’t borrow trouble. We
still have months.” I tell myself “you
can move. A month is an augenblick,”
I tell myself “it can’t be that bad.”
I say “not here, it can’t happen here.” I wonder
where to live next. Taut faces surround me.
In every group, a mother who says,“hush,”
a mother who says “everything is fine.”
Around me, children are blown to mush.
I am a mother. Don’t we say dumb stuff?


Author’s gloss: augenblick—the blink of an eye

Wendy Taylor Carlisle lives and write in the Ozarks. She is the author of two books and three chapbooks, most recently Persephone on the Metro. See her work in Concis, Rat’s Ass Review, Mom Egg Review, and the Kentucky Review.

THE POPE'S PAGEANTRY

by Janet Leahy

SANTIAGO, Chile — Many watched in disbelief: There he was, Pope Francis, calling people in Osorno, a city in southern Chile, “dumb” for protesting against a bishop accused of being complicit in clerical sexual abuse. “The Osorno community is suffering because it’s dumb,” Pope Francis told a group of tourists on St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City, because it “has let its head be filled with what politicians say, judging a bishop without any proof. . . . Don’t be led by the nose by the leftists who orchestrated all of this,” the pope said. —NY Times, October 7, 2015

As if he could watch the men
in church vestments and not remember
the first commandment of childhood
“Do Not Tell.”

As if seeing the men in long robes
would not open the dark pit of memory
the threat “Do Not Tell”
nightmares of abuse still haunt him.

As if he would not try to erase the memories
with a final forgetting
the haunting abuse never recedes
the therapist’s bridge difficult to travel.

A final forgetting looms
an escape from the commandment of childhood
the therapist’s footbridge difficult to travel
the watchman walks.


Janet Leahy lives in New Berlin, Wisconsin.  She works with several critique groups in the area and attends a poetry class facilitated by Dr. Margaret Rozga at UW Waukesha. Her poems are published in anthologies, journals, and appear at TheNewVerse.News and other on-line poetry sites.  She has two collections of poetry and is a member of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets.