MASS SHOOTING #8

600 block of Jackson Ave., Muskegon, MI, Dec 6, 2025

“2 people dead, three others, including child, injured in Muskegon shooting”

by Ron Riekki

“Sure, this world is full of trouble

I ain't said it ain't.”

—Douglas Malloch, “It’s Fine Today”

They say there are 200 different words for snow

in the Sámi language, like the northern Sámi

 

vahtsa, which is new snow on old snow, which

now is the case, driving a rented car on plowed

road, but then turning onto the street of our latest

 

mass shooting in Michigan and instantly it’s

unplowed, so thick with snow that it scrapes

 

the bottom of the vehicle, yet ice on the tires

so that the car swerves back and forth, with

a realization that I can’t stop, so I drive by

 

a house with caution tape lying in snow, but

it doesn’t look like the photos or videos online

 

of where the shooting happened and I wonder

if it’s another incident, especially since this city—

Muskegon, Michigan—has been plagued with

 

a dozen shootings: 9mm and Glock and “AR-

style rifle” and “stolen pistol” and “handguns”

 

and another shooting on the 1400 block of

Gyrock and a “19-year-old has been arraigned”

and nine killed and eleven injured in Muskegon

 

this year alone, a population of 38,000, and it’s

26 degrees with the wind chill, two months since

 

the last mass shooting; and a Democrat online

tells me it’s due to the cold, and someone else

online says it’s due to astrology, wants to know

 

the alignment of the stars, and I stare at the home

I think where the shooting happened, but I can’t

 

stop, the street empty, absolutely nobody outside,

and the house where it happened looks dead, no

lights on inside, but, later, down the street, I see

 

a window with bright white Christmas decorations,

a snow-colored fake tree elegant in the window,

 

and I swing the car around once there’s plowed

road and go down it again, still not able to stop,

still swerving, windows down, the cold frowning

 

into the car, a church nearby unplowed as well

as if no human has been down this street since

 

the shooting, the feel of abandonment, how that

tends to be the feeling of so many of these sites

of shooting, and I stop at a shop, a garage, closed

 

for the night, a large sign saying BLOOD’S all

in red, all in caps, such an odd name for a “front

 

end clinic,” the address 13-something, and

the building bone-colored; getting my bearings,

I drive, looking for anyone to talk to, but all

 

is winter-quiet, a worker stepping out of a back

exit of a restaurant, wiping sweat off his fore-

 

head with his sleeve, his breath visible, and

then, amidst all these closed stores: a liquor

store, how so many of these mass shootings

 

are near liquor stores and churches, parks

and cannabis dispensaries. A 4-year-old

 

was shot at this mass shooting. A 22-year-

old woman and 25-year-old man killed.

A worker throws out piles of cardboard

 

into a dumpster—no recycling—massive

letters of SAM’S DRINK ALL on the store,

 

such a bizarre name, like a command, and

the worker tells me he has no thoughts on

the shooting, doesn’t want to talk about

 

the shooting, doesn’t want me going into

the store, calls and confirms that I am not

 

allowed into the store, but then teenagers

walk into the liquor store and there seems

to be no problem with this. Seeing two

 

children alone in a car, the mother later

emerging from inside. I talk with a 14-

 

year-old who wanders up, says that his

birthday is tomorrow. He’s with a friend.

I ask how we stop gun violence, if they

 

heard about the shooting. They tell me

they know there’ve been shootings. How

 

do we stop them? One of them walks

away, into the store.  The 14-year-old

remains, saying it’s “parenting” and

 

"finances," that “it gets harder every year,”

that people sell drugs to survive. I ask

 

how he’s avoided it: “work and school

and sports.” Football.  Behind him,

the words liquor – beer – wine – lotto.

 

These liquor stores near mass shootings,

always so busy. The 14-year-old goes inside.

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

HOUSE ARREST

by Devon Balwit

A few months before he began his 2022 Senate campaign, JD Vance reached out to a conservative family policy group with an idea for an opinion essay. He wanted to write about why government-subsidized day care was bad — and why most young children do better when one parent stays home... “We cannot get away from the fact that a child is hard-wired to bond with mom,” said Jenet Erickson, a co-writer of Mr. Vance’s 2021 essay and a fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, a conservative policy group that advocates for raising the birthrate. “They know her smell, they know her heartbeat, they know her voice. I just think, why should we deny that?” —The New York Times, May 12, 2025

 

 

It is impossible for any situation to go on well where one is at the bottom who ought to be either independent or at the top. I am at the bottom and ought not be there. —Florence Nightingale, private note, 1851, in Ever Yours, Florence Nightingale: Selected Letters

 

Lacking a penis, the young Florence Nightingale

had to satisfy herself with the yearly sorting of linens

and kitchen utensils. She noted, wryly, in her journal

that, as for the latter, form didn’t follow function—

she hadn’t the faintest idea of their use. She hoped,

that Capital, by creating a need for them, had allowed some

at least, to earn their bread. Luckily, proper scope

for her talents emerged in the war hospitals of Crimea.

 

Now, talk has again turned to what 

is “natural” for women—surprise—a predilection for babies

and scutwork. Out comes the myth, trailing dust,

that career women are selfish and their children unhappy.

Have we learned nothing since the Victorians—

that if unchosen, a woman’s home is her prison?

When not making art, Devon Balwit walks in all weather and edits for Asimov Press and Asterisk Magazine.

OUR DATE

by Maria Lisella

Skittles-covered Bicycle. Image source: Foodbeast.

My stepson spent
the afternoon in detention
for lying to a nun.

I told them my name means
pheasants in Italian,
but no one believed me.

Half white, half Puerto Rican,
Italian last name, nappy hair,
said otherwise.

At the perfect age of 10,
my stepson and I
had a date one afternoon.

Determined to teach him to fly,
forget nuns, divorced parents,
over-protective mother,

or, just ride a bike.
A two-wheeler, banana seat,
shiny, chrome, bells, streamers.

He’d run alongside it
throw one leg far and wide
in time to find the pedal

on the other side.
I clutched the back of the seat
sent him off as far as I could.

Like my father did for me,
knowing spills and harm
would follow.

Years later,
a knot in my heart,
his dusty, tear-smeared face

lips quivering, telling me
of a quick ride to Pelham Bay
where he was chased down

by taunts of "You don’t belong here."
            I tried to tell them my name
            but no one listened.

I think of all I don’t know
about courage ­– how to build it,
pass it on, when to fight, to flee,

and when to leave your bike
behind, save your life,
find your way home.


Maria Lisella's Pushcart Poetry Prize-nominated work appears in Amore on Hope Street and Two Naked Feet as well as a number of journals such as Feile Festa, LIPS, Paterson Literary Review, Skidrow Penthouse and online at DanMurano.com and First Literary Review East. Her forthcoming collection, Thieves in the Family, will be published by New York Quarterly Books in 2014. She is a charter member of the online poetry circle, Brevitas and co-curates the Italian American Writers Association literary readings at Cornelia St. Cafe and Sidewalk Cafe in NYC.