SCHOOLYARD ATTRITION

by Zackary Ross Wiggs

Illustration by Golden Cosmos, The New Yorker, May 25, 2018

Texas alone has suffered 17 mass shootings this year and now lawmakers propose ‘battlefield trauma care’ facilities in schools. —The Guardian, May 13, 2023

Cut the flagpoles in two,

since they're at half-mast 

all year round

We could use the extra steel

to make more guns.

Build another Arlington,

for the brave school kids

gunned down in math class.

Hallowed ground filled,

with children full of hollow-points.

Too many thousand yard stares.

Bottlecap metals sewn on chests,

of children with kindergarten war stories.

Senior trips to graveside services,

for those gunned down at recess.

Zackary Ross Wiggs is a writer from Southeast Kansas. A recent creative writing master's graduate, when he isn't writing he is usually found absorbed in some show or book. His works have also been published in Unstamatic Press, Shacklebound Press, and The Joplin Toad. 

THE NEW NOVEMBER

by Jan Steckel

for Garrett Murphy

 

Late October is the New November,

the nova ember, when all slates

are made new. Ladybug, ladybug,

fly away home, your statehouse is on fire.

If you can’t vote the bastards out, 

drag along your electoral hammers,

spousal skull-crushers. Surveil those 

ballot boxes through the sights 

of your AR13s, only wear masks 

when you’re Ku Klux Klanning.

Proud Boys will be bashers.

It’s the ballot-harvesting festival,

so let’s go smashing pumpkins.

MAGA MAGA make it rain, it’s

lefty-hunting season again.

Kristallnacht’s in fashie-fashion.

Jack-o-Lannister, slide down

the Capitol bannister.

Olly olly oxen free!

Open season/no more reason:

civil discourse is passé,

democracy’s so yesterday.

Grab your billyclubs, shillaleghs, 

flagpoles, sheriff’s star,

little red baseball cap.

It’s mass grave o’clock, wake up, 

smell the decomposing bodies.

Get up off your brass knuckles—

Let the midterms begin!

Jan Steckel’s book Like Flesh Covers Bone (Zeitgeist Press, 2018) won Rainbow Awards for LGBT Poetry and Best Bisexual Book. Her poetry book The Horizontal Poet (Zeitgeist Press, 2011) won a Lambda Literary Award. Her fiction chapbook Mixing Tracks (Gertrude Press, 2009) and poetry chapbook The Underwater Hospital (Zeitgeist Press, 2006) also won awards. She lives in Oakland, California.