RED FLAG

by Tricia Knoll

You stepped in the doorway.
Come, you said, to comfort me.

A long way to come without
having gone anywhere new,

I thought, the nurse watched
over me to help me contain

my anger, but I could not.
The background: strangers

arrived to check out a victim.
Such a long way to come

without moving an inch.
My fingers searched

for a red flag to hold up
when I spit out

ban assault rifles,
don’t let white men

use them as banners
for hate.

The hate you wave
at every turn.


Tricia Knoll asks how she might feel if she were in a hospital bed after a shooting and the President arrived.

AFTER THE SHOOTING IN EL PASO

by Tina Barry

Image by Melissa Joskow / Media Matters

Invade with your            hot mouth   lie

uncovered among the fragrance      of the world!  

Look at what comes    Look at them    An invasion 

what marches toward us    marches with night-

eyes   An invasion   To be invaded       To be  

“simply defending my country” To deafen

To defend “from cultural and ethnic replace

ment”   The rest are in the light that bursts

into secret        Where what are?  

Things that begin  when fire-

blue waves open fire on 

                    the poor

                parched heart

Author’s Note: The poem’s lines are borrowed from Pablo Neruda’s Love Sonnet “I” in his 100 Love Sonnets and from “El Paso Shooting Suspect’s Manifesto Echoes Trump’s Language,” by Peter Baker and Michael D. Shear, The New York Times, August 4, 2019.

Tina Barry is a freelance writer, poet, short fiction writer and curator. She is the author of Mall Flower (Big Table Publishing, 2016). Tina’s writing has been included in The Best Short Fictions 2016, Drunken Boat, Inch Magazine, Yes, Poetry, Connotation Press, and several anthologies including Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse, Feckless Cunt and A Constellation of Kisses. In 2018-2019, Tina conceived and curated “The Virginia Project,” a collaborative written word and visual art exhibition that celebrated Virginia Haggard, the partner of the artist Marc Chagall, and Haggard’s daughter Jean McNeil. Beautiful Raft, the writing that launched the exhibit, will be published this fall. Tina is a teaching artist at The Poetry Barn and Gemini Ink.