ENABLERS

by Elizabeth Kerlikowske

 

If you let your sons win at card games,          they will never learn strategy.

If you talk down to them using simple baby words,       they won't understand complexity.

Because you don’t want them to fail,                   you don’t make them do anything hard.

You accept every lie because it is easier   and more comfortable than checking up.

If your son is always where the trouble is,       your son is the trouble.

Your son knows you will bail him out,     make the excuse, buy him another car.

Hell, you might even buy him the gun          he uses to murder a man and then

kill himself.                     Your love knows no bounds.

Author’s note: I saw something like this play out in my own life when my stepmother did provide the gun my brother used at the end of the poem because she could not say no to him.

Elizabeth Kerlikowske teaches ekphrastic writing at the Kalamazoo Institute of Art and volunteers at an alternative high school. 

I DON’T GOT NOTHING. I DON’T GOT NOTHING

a collaborative poem 

by Amaré Fields and Ron Riekki

“I gotta run at eight.”  “So we got seventeen minutes to write this.”

“He gotta a gun and hate.”  “He’s seventeen years old bleeding to death.”

He was a kid. He could’ve been mine as me could have been yours.

We don’t have that kinda lingo in Seattle.  We have everywhere a battle.

With 9mm ruler sticks measuring out your lifespan.  Kadir Skinner,

19-years-old.  “We have a warning.  This video is difficult to watch.”

Have you seen Sinners?

Fourteen shots, 2 blocks ran. He was running.

How does someone defend themselves with their back turned?

Grey hoodie turned red with hate.  How does someone hear

Black words?  I’m not talking about the good cops.  We’re

talking about the bad cops.  We’re talking about black ops.

We’re talking about being hooded, dropped. “He was clearly

running away.” He has a gun he had a gun. The only gun

to his head pointed by the one with the blue

thread.  “I gotta run at eight.”  “So we got eleven minutes to write

this poem.” Cops protecting a land they not even

from. Drum bomb, Iran with a gun. 14 shots

10 blocks from the sun. You motherfucks

ain’t want this son. Honey bloody money

call for your mum.  We’re not talking about the Black cops,

we’re talking about the bad cops.  Bad cops

ain’t far from the good cops. 10 blocks

running from the blue opps.  Black bodies not far from

their homes.  Shot. Glock 19 MOS pistol

whipped car with lights too

bright. I can’t see.  Pissed writing this.  Resist.

I can’t see I can’t see. I. Can’t. See.

He was clearly running away.  Unarmed.

Unharmed?  Hell no.  Fuck the politicing

the hall of pity, shit ain’t witty.  Fuck the politicing

coming straight from the underground, a young brother

got it bad ‘cause he’s dead. Dead, honey. Dead,

you hear that. Dead.

You better start running now, motherfucker

We not talking about the Black cops,

the bad cops; shoot you down

front of your dad cops.

“Where’s your cousin?”

“He’s deceased.”

Body camera video of deadly police shooting released.

“I gotta run at eight.”  “We got three minutes to write this fucking poem.”

Ain’t bout the poem no more.

Words on a page

can’t hold this rage.

Please, don’t shoot.

I can’t see. Blood in my eyes

I can’t see.

I can’t sleep.

He can’t do anything except sleep.

If you held a microphone up to this brother

What would he say? 

Amaré, we got one more minute to write this poem:

what you got to say to the world?

Fuck the politicking this is real life.

Klu klux hold the world to a real knife.

Amaré Fields is a young Black and Japanese poet and scholar currently attending Yale University.

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

TESTtosterone

by Darcy Grabenstein 

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Wednesday that he is rolling out a new screening program for “testosterone deficiency” among troops, calling it necessary to allow them to operate at their “absolute best.” ...In the video, Hegseth simply refers to troops, though it appears he is talking about only testing men in uniform for hormone irregularities. AP, July 16, 2026

Pete HEgseth is proving 

that he’s a manly man, a HE-man
for he’s questioning the virility
of our men in uniform

After all, isn’t the true test of masculinity
taking advantage of under-age girls
or throwing punches in a UFC fight
or ICE goons slaughtering citizens?

Those in the good ole boys’ club
probably think that those with ‘low T’ 
would rather have high tea, pinkies raised
than shove a gun in the enemy’s face

Test for testosterone? Preposterous!

Here’s what and who we should be testing:
the IQ of our nation’s leaders
to determine whether they’re fit for office
not whether our troops are fit to serve

Excuse me. I’m about to have a fit.

A marketing writer by profession, Darcy Grabenstein turns to poetry as a creative and cathartic outlet. The theme of social (in)justice runs through many of her poems, and she longs for the day where her page will finally be blank.

ODE: TO WITNESSING

by Margaret Gannon

Dedicated to poet journalist Ron Riekki who has covered all of Michigan’s mass shootings for The New Verse News since July 2025.

Each time the news repeats 

a scene of rampage, of chaos 

among folks who only yesterday 

went to the market 

for eggs or cigarettes. 

Each time the news zooms in on 

someone else’s pavement smeared 

with blood and worse; 

someone else’s daytime shattered,

nighttime exploded. 

Each time the news serves breakfast 

with jelly spread on toast and 

coffee spilled a bit on the table 

by the digital screen showing

a picture of a police car.

Each time, one by one, the news

forgets yesterday’s message 

and last week’s, twice, and doesn’t 

remember last month’s and then 

again, again.

Each time, the news reports

the reason, the explanation, 

the context that says 

human nature is the trigger.

If the news arrived with a face 

that had looked and looked 

at all the sameness of death — 

the vacant lot, the corner store, 

the porch, the schoolyard, 

the bar, the beauty shop,  

the man, the men, the boys, 

the singular girl, 

the shooters, the victims, 

their mothers, the neighbors 

all stunned in deadly experience —

each time asking why 

that despairing human being 

had a gun,

would the answer be like the kid 

to the cop in The Wire:

“Got to. This America, Man.”?

Margaret Gannon is an attorney retired from representing women in Bay Area courts for 50 years.

FOR MINNEAPOLIS

by Ruth Lehrer

They don’t tell you in the morning
you will die by noon 
driving in your car
walking on the street 
 
after you are gone
you see a picture of the gun
flesh as good as ashes
blood as good as painted pain 
 
But in that morning you just know
yesterday your neighbor was brave
so today you must be too
The boundary between trust and fear
torn open
 
We are all ash
We are all brave. 

Ruth Lehrer is a sign language interpreter and Pushcart-nominated poet living in western Massachusetts. She is the author of the young adult novel Being Fishkill. 

AUBADES FOR WOMEN LOST

by Andrena Zawinski

“Aubade,” 1942 by Pablo Picasso

So—

(An Aubade for a Woman Lost

So he gave her a pearl handled gun,

its skull and crossbones in a red red rose.

So she packed it moonlighting 

driving nights for a ride share.

So she never used it.

So it was used on her.

So he shoved it sideways inside her

mouth smeared bloody with lipstick.

So her temple bore a jewel of a bullet bloom.

So her dark eyes rolled backwards ghastly white.

So she kept on talking: no, oh no, oh no.

So he was a person of interest let go.

So they strung a cardboard toe tag

where she had worn his gold band.

So they put her in the cold bed 

silenced in a morgue drawer.

So at daybreak on her birthday, he ate 

that same gun, metallic on the tongue, 

crying out: no, oh no, oh no.

So it never even made the evening news.

—for Georgeann Eskievich Rettberg 

    (1952-2003)

She—

(Another Aubade for a Woman Lost)

She, mother of three

in the routine of another day,

shot down driving away 

in the Minnesota snow 

from ICE officers

mixed and missed dictates.

She, another woman lost, 

her wife and observers

in a chorus of fear

calling out

oh no, oh no, oh no.

She, a poet who wrote

of solipsist sunsets,

tercets from cicadas,

that the bible and qur’an 

and bhagavad gita…

make room for wonder.

She, now a metaphor

of lilies and lavender,

votives and tea lights

peace signs and queer flags

for what could have been,

what could be for any of us.

She, in a murderous

last rite anointed as fucking bitch

silenced by three bullets,

face awash in blood.

She, reduced

to an endless loop 

of twisted narratives

on the news circuits

while women cry out

again and again an endless

oh no, oh no, oh no.

—for Renee Nicole Good 

    (1989-2026)

Andrena Zawinski is the author of four full-length collections of poetry, most recently Born Under the Influence. Her work has been lauded for its appreciation of nature, spirituality, social concern, and craft. Her writing appears widely online and in print, including at Verse Daily. Born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA, she has made her home on Alameda Island in the San Francisco Bay Area.