WE’RE A BUNCH OF WEIRDOS

by Ron Riekki

Protest #1, base of Pentacrest, Iowa City, IO, July 10, 2026 (approximate number of protestors: 1)

"And it was striking, how much less alone that could make you feel, because of course to be peopled at all was a high-order gift, but to find people beyond your people was nothing short of miraculous.”

—Claire Lombardo

The Most Fun We Ever Had

“No.” “We’re a bunch of weirdos”—

the response I get when asking if

the group of huddled people are

veterans. There’s another group,

also not veterans. And I realize,

no one showed up for the protest.

It’s hard to interview nobody.

It’s hard to get a quote about

the value of protesting when

the total number of protestors

is 0. Iowa has become I0wa.

In front of me is a wonderful

park, as if it was made solely

for protesting. It has a base-

ball field feel, but with no base-

balls. There’s even a sign that

says, YOU HAVE THE RIGHT

TO express yourself ON CAMPUS

and there’s this beautiful campus

and this absence of expression.

The sign is placed on the ground,

like home plate. I imagine this

field filled with the ghosts of

protestors. There’s The Ghost of

Protestors Past, and of Protestors

Future. I’d left a U Iowa lecture

about writing hybrid fiction/non-

fiction, Emily White talking about

her love of The Armies of the Night,

heteronormative male Norman Mailer

recounting the March on the Pentagon

in 1967… This is History as a Poem,

The Poem as History… In honor of

Mailer’s “Ultimately a hero is a man

who would argue with the gods.”

Although it’s 2026 and Mailer’s

“Ultimately a hero is a man” is dead.

I’d argue with the god of Mailer…

I rush back to the lecture, missing

the pissing break, to only catch

the tail end, but, luck, there’s a vet

in the audience, an infamous one—

Jimbo Gillchrist, an active activist

writer who, when I start asking him

about the value of protests quickly

points out the fairly obvious, stating,

“I’m white.” He says this inside of

a building with a prominent BLACK

LIVES MATTER sign tucked, very

appropriately, on the far left side

of the building, problematically no

black lives in the sole class I’m taking

this summer at U Iowa, a fiction class,

the kind instructor talking of her Chicago

homelessness social work background,

class conscious, the room more than

three-quarters women, but race an issue

where we discuss the namelessness and

facelessness of the indigenous characters

in one of the stories and no one has any

problem with it, which I’m not expecting

in 2026 woke culture, but woke culture

tends to be whatever is represented in

the room and what is absent is absent.

Jimbo’s a combat vet who introduced

himself to the class quickly pointing out

his PTSD. In the lecture, I’m surprised

he sits up front, not a cliché of being in

the back of the room, in a corner, hyper-

vigilant. His breath, a Jim Jarmusch mix of

coffee and cigarettes. His beard, a mix of

casual and casualties-of-war where he

wants to distance himself from Army

cadet hairlessness. I ask him about

the hopelessness of protests where no

one shows, but first ask him how many

were at today’s protest. He guesstimates

“6,000.”  I tell him 0. Only the last

digit of 6,000. He tells me he doesn’t

have time for an interview, needs to

see a friend, but then he gives me

the interview, talks about how hard

it is to assemble humans. He tells me

that, from experience, if you get 6,000

people to attend a protest, only about

“5” will actually stay on to do consistent

work on a daily/weekly basis of what

it takes to do true community change.

I ask him the hard questions—a Black

Lives Matter’s DeRay McKesson inter-

view I saw where he talked about violence

against blacks increasing—not decreasing—

after protests, and Radley Balko’s book

Rise of the Warrior Cop, how protests

Fund the Police (not De-), how post-protest,

police put together policies to promote

more violence, more police, more pepper

spray, more weaponry, more SWAT teams,

more cops with AR-15s, CQBRs, M4A1s,

Colt Commandos, Sig Sauers, Hecklers,

names like diseases, how these collections

of letters kill better than previous weapons,

getting better at death. Zach Cregger-level horror.

Not comedy. I discuss indigenous protestors, if, after

arrested, they become even more disempowered,

if you’re poor and vulnerable prior to the protest,

but then poor and vulnerable and you’ve just been

incarcerated, if you’re now even more poor and

more vulnerable. I ask him if it’s better to be

involved in actually changing the system, rather

than the performativity of protest. Wearing

a purple T-shirt with bold white letters of

PEACE, Jimbo tells me protests give us

expression, give us solidarity, give us a “node”

for community change. I think of lymph nodes,

fighting for the immune system, fighting

infections, diseases of plutocracy. But I keep

bringing up the loop, how Republicans take

something like fat-shaming and fast-food

companies further the message to increase

unhealthy eating, not ¢aring about the harm$.

How Republicans profit off mass shootings,

where gun sales increase afterwards. How

Republicans profit off of cancel culture, where

liberals are hardest hit by it, how Al Franken

is no longer a senator but Trump’s re-elected,

and how protests just expand police militarization.

“I’ll have to think about it,” Jimbo says.

I ask if there’s anything he wants to say

to New Verse News readers. He does.

He says, “I want to tell people, like, tap into your

local community and find ways you can to get

involved,” that “there’s all these ways to get

involved that aren’t protests.” He talks of

medic training, housing assistance, community

aid centers. I’m surprised how logical he is,

was expecting more of an emotional response.

Online, I viewed his arrest at a protest the week-

end after George Floyd’s death. Jimbo says he’s

processed what happened, his arrest. I’ve seen

him taking routine smoke breaks, alone, little

self-harm rituals. He’s a combat vet, a person

who risked his life in the George Floyd protests,

a grounded interviewee for the National Catholic

Reporter, speaking about how “none of us had

grasped that what we were doing was obviously

unjust,” referring to the war, his face shot alone,

a disembodied voice interviewing him. I have

a strong visual of Jimbo smoking by himself outside,

as if it represents combat veterans as a whole,

alone, outside, fresh air, yet breathing in smoke,

taking in a stimulant to relax, how jolts of

adrenaline feel normal, this male who comes

to class, his shirt ripped, my wondering if he

knows… I go to the library to write this history,

but it’s closing—both history and the library—

them turning the lights off in a slow sequence,

but I keep writing, trying, wanting to describe

the Pentacrest. Such an odd name. Conjuring

up Rage Against the Machine’s “five-sided

Fistagon,” the pentagram, pent-up frustration,

Penthouse and penthouses, repenting, the state

pen, the need to take pen to paper, the Pentagon.

I stumble on the Pentacrest webcam online, view it,

studying the buildings. How would I describe it?

An online description of its “diagonal axes,”

its “nineteenth-century brick,” touches of Italian

Renaissance, aims at “prestige.” And there,

in the corner, on the screen, I see a man, waving

a flag, like he’s on a desert island, a plea of SOS.

I rush there. It’s hours after the posted start time.

I see all of the protestors. All one, yes, one, of them.

He marches, slowly, in the heat, humidity,

where I’m sweating just from the short walk over.

He carries two flags, a miniature Palestinian

flag, and a massive white Veteransforpeace

flag, that he’s not waving, but, rather, the wind is,

for him. He has no energy, walks like a senior,

not a U of Iowa senior, but a citizen, and he is

a citizen, proudly protesting, but I’m not sure what.

I ask him. He’s not enthusiastic to talk, quickly

hands me a pamphlet, a petite piece of paper

the size of my palm, a Statement of Purpose

that he is here “1. To increase public aware-

ness of the causes and costs of war.” So I ask

him to increase public awareness by sharing

his story with me, wondering if he’s a vet.

He asks why I’d want to know that. I tell him

that he’s carrying a flag that says both ‘Veterans’

and ‘peace,’ so I figured I’d ask him about both.

He accepts this answer. He’s a Vietnam vet,

there, 1966-1967, a “radio op,” says, “What

we did in Vietnam,” says, “things that transpired

were horrific and insane.” I ask what happened,

but he doesn’t want to tell me. He was drafted

at 19. In the 1980s, diagnosed through the V.A.

with “10%” disability for “PTSD and some

physical” symptoms. I ask him what those are,

which angers him. He tells me he’ll “end this

right now” if I don’t start asking him the right

questions. He wants to know why I’d want to

know if he’s a vet, if I’m an “investigative

reporter,” that others “come around asking

questions.” He tells me he’s “tired of this

whole thing.” I wonder if he means this

interview, but he means “what’s happening

in the world.” He tells me he marches from

“a half hour to an hour,” going back and forth,

this prestigious building paired with this man

who looks so tired, a Santa Claus without joy,

a Vietnam vet Saint Nick, this feeling that

Christmas has been cancelled this century.

He tells me his disability rating was upped

to “60%,” later, after going back to the V.A.

“multiple times.” I ask about his PTSD;

this triggers him. Asking about his PTSD

triggers his PTSD. In the last year for

New Verse News I went, frequently, into

gang territory in Detroit, Flint, and, oddly,

I’m actually the most on-guard with this vet,

a feeling he could explode at any second,

but this knowledge that the danger with veterans

is largely exaggerated in the media. I see the Vietnam

vet in him, but I also see the Santa Claus. I keep

talking. He wants to know if I’m conservative,

if I’m “ABC, NBC,” warns of “all the networks bought

out by billionaires, right-wingers.” I laugh,

telling him New Verse News would not exactly be

labeled right wing, not even close, rather on the far

other side of the pendulum. He relaxes a bit.

I ask his name. At this, he’s done. For some

reason, this angers him the most. I tell him

it can just be his first name. Or a nickname.

But he’s done. He tells me the interview is “over.”

He stands under “Devonian limestone” building,

“Beaux-Arts architecture.” The elite and impolite,

the ruling and the unruly. I go to the other side

of the street, distant, watching him, walking,

back and forth, so slowly, families with sons

and daughters walking by, orientation week,

like they don’t even see him, and he pauses,

stands there, alone, so incredibly alone, this

strange sadness I didn’t expect, again, having

gone to multiple mass shooting sites and, yet,

yes, this moment, where—am I the saddest

yet? The lack of energy to his motions. This

sheer repetitiveness. And, then, for a moment,

a student, I believe, dressed all in black, such

contrast, talks to this man, walks with him,

across the circular opening area in front of

the Pentacrest, a car blocking my view,

where I actually hope he’ll stay and talk

to this nameless vet, a vet who refuses

to be named, and the car moves, and I see

he’s left, that this man is alone, his white

flag, his white skin, ghost-like, the flag

waving, like the signal for surrender, this

feel as if he himself is a surrendering ghost.

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

MY ONLY FRIEND, THE END

by Ron Riekki

AI-generated graphic by NightCafé for The New Verse News.

“How do you know what’s on the other side?”

—Alex Vartan Gubbins,

“Kufr Qa’ra, Palestine”

 

“just the flat snow of endurance”

—Ron Riekki,

“the poem where I am lit on fire and hauled up high in the air for all of Negaunee to see”

 

“The world heals”

—Jonathan Johnson,

“In a New Grief”

Michigan to me is sometimes home

and sometimes a toilet

and sometimes where I had my first kiss

and sometimes is where I was attacked by a group of boys (on Croix Street—the goddamn nonstop violence of streets—the crucifixion in the name—like a Nail Road—a Suffering Street—a 39 Lashes Boulevard), with my collarbone shattered so that the doctor said if the bone shard had gone over a little bit more it could have punctured a lung and I could have died

and sometimes it’s a lake, a teal lake, a lake named Teal Lake, where I ached and hurt and cried and laughed and leaped and swam where I felt I was flying and flew off the rocks into the Negaunee water that was hotter than the air there and there were days I felt happy there

and sometimes felt horrid

and sometimes felt nothing,

numb

in the winters where it got so cold that the radio actually warned cows’ ears could freeze and break off

and summers warmed and saved me

and

often, no, every time I write I feel the pain in my shoulder

so pain, I suppose, should

enter into everything I write.

And it does.

 

For the last year, I’ve gone to every mass shooting in Michigan

and I’ll never do it again,

never go to a mass shooting

ever

again—

aging

with nothing to gain.

My insides deserted, tundraed, hurricaned,

sick with memory.

I did it because I was afraid of mass shootings.

 

In July of 2018, 8

years ago,

my girlfriend and I were looking online, deciding

if we should go to a Kite Festival or to a Garlic Festival.

We decided on the festival for kites, simply because it was closer,

and it was getting later,

and we’d only make the tail-end of the Garlic Festival,

so we went to the kites that were beautiful and boring

and I went to the water because the ocean was more beautiful, kites soaring

behind me as we looked out at the San Fran Bay water,

and we didn’t know,

but at the Garlic Festival

that we didn’t go to

a mass shooter opened fire on everyone there

with a semi-automatic rifle and AK-47,

39 rounds

firing into the food area,

reports that someone yelled to the shooter why he was doing the killings

and the mass murderer yelled back,

“Because I’m really angry.”

 

And America keeps getting angrier.

 

It feels like I have a bullet inside me.

It feels like there is a bullet in the center of the city where I live,

the city where the company where I work refuses to give any special accommodations

to the disabled,

because the company says, We see you as contractors

and not employees,

so you have no rights.

Yes,

it feels like there is a bullet in the forearm of

God.

 

In paramedic school, the instructor told us about the time he was shot,

and then asked if any of the students had ever been shot

and one student raised his hand

and told us what it’s like to be shot,

and then they taught us how to stop bleeding,

because, they said, this was Orlando.

And

in the last three days in Florida, 8 people have been shot.  4 dead.  One of them a 4-year-old girl.  And a 2-year-old girl injured.  Less than a two-hour drive to Disney World from where they were shot.

 

And when I lived in Virginia,

in Charlottesville, I went to deliver a pizza

for my part-time job

and when I got to the trailer

someone yelled to open the door

and when I opened the door

the guy had a shotgun pointed at my chest.

He said he did it for a joke

“to see the expression on my face.”

 

I remember a Democrat in a social justice class saying in class

that Democrats need to start acting more like Republicans,

that Democrats need to be angrier.

It was a class where the teacher didn’t want to hear from me,

would purposely not call on me if I raised my hand, so I

learned ‘learned helplessness,’ helplessly

sitting there, thinking, no, we don’t need more anger,

thinking that I think it’s to love more.

I think.

This year I went to Enterprise to rent a car and the guy behind the counter called

me a misogynistic curse word I won’t use here, because it’s disgusting, his anger

that I wanted to rent a car on my birthday, angry, he said, that my license

would expire the next day, pissed off at me,

so strangely

angry

and inappropriately misogynistic,

and a kayaker was angry I was inner tubing on the river,

wanted only kayakers on the river

so he ran his kayak straight at me, puncturing my inner tube,

and a grocery store clerk, after I asked her how her day was going, telling me

a story of two customers who got in a fist fight in the line

to buy groceries,

and a woman shot in her right elbow last month, a 14-minute drive from where I live,

and when I was young

in Michigan

there was not one single road rage incident

I ever witnessed in my life

and

this month

I’ve seen two,

drivers driving

like they hate the world.

And I don’t know what’s happening.

 

A prisoner called me.

From prison.

I wasn’t sure if it was a mass shooter,

wanting to tell his story,

but I’m not interested in speaking with the mass shooters.

This year, I was interested in speaking with the survivors,

the resilient.

 

I’ll be honest: I’m afraid of this world.  Very.

 

I contacted every single one of the Lansing city council members

after the Lansing mass shooting,

the secretary who answered my call telling me the council is “very”

interested in lessening gun violence.

Not one city council member called me back.

Not one.

In fact, I reached out to over a dozen gun violence reduction organizations this year.

Not one single one of them contacted me back,

except one,

that said they were “too busy”

to talk to me.

 

I previously went to a Republican meeting.  Just to see what’s it’s like.

What it was like was organized.

What it was like was accepting.

There were shared beliefs in God,

shared beliefs in marriage,

shared beliefs in guns.

Shared beliefs I didn’t believe in,

didn’t share.

But they were shared

there.

The meeting went smoothly.

Everyone was on the same team.

And

I went to a Democrat meeting

to see what it was like.

It was chaos.

It was anger.

It was disarray.

Arguing.

It was walking on egg shells.

Your language had to be perfect or the room would flare up in anger.

It was cancel culture on top of cancel culture.

I couldn’t wait to leave

both

meetings.

 

I went to a gun violence organization meeting.

One of the big ones.

I won’t say the name.

But it felt tense.

I could tell one of the people there was some form of security,

pretending not to be,

but it was obvious.

At our table, I asked someone in the group

how the conversation about guns is complex.

They wanted to know what I meant.

I said that I’d looked up info and saw that more whites were killed by police in the last year—

and they interrupted and said that, no, percentage-wise, it was black people.

And I said percentage-wise, it listed, actually, indigenous people as the most disproportionately killed by police,

and then the table exploded.

Someone came over, said they were an organizer, and asked what I’d said

that had caused so much anger.

I restated it and she told me to never say that again, that it wasn’t what we were here for

and I asked her thoughts on it, if we need to complicate the discussion

and she told me, “Enough.”

Which was the slogan of the organization, a word on their shirts.

And I wonder if we can’t talk about guns.

 

So that’s why I wanted to talk about guns this year.

Because we can’t.

 

I’m not as afraid of mass shootings anymore.

I’ve gone to areas

with some of the highest crime rates in the U.S.

and asked the people there

if they’re afraid of mass shootings

and over and over

I’d hear, “No.”

I’d hear that you don’t get drunk, don’t get high, don’t hang around with

people who are drunk or high or both and who have guns.

But what about Garlic Festivals?

And Route 91 Harvest Music Festivals?

And Virginia Techs?

And Sandy Hooks?

And Orlando night clubs?

 

I’d quit being an EMT

right before the Orlando Pulse mass shooting.

2016.  107 people shot.  A 20-minute drive to Disney.

I remember driving by that club

in the ambulance.

South Orange Ave.  11-minute drive from my company.

I remember one of the EMTs calling Florida

The Gunshine State.

I remember transporting gunshot victims,

How bullets enter everywhere,

Exit everywhere.

The randomness of it.

Who lives.

Who dies.

Roughly about 25% of gunshot victims die.

Unless if shot in the head.

Then roughly about 90% of them die.

Roughly.

I’ve talked to people who’ve been shot in the head.

Multiple.

Seen the scars.

I wonder what they were like before they were shot.

 

I quit the ambulance company right before the Pulse shooting,

otherwise, we’d have probably gone there.

I can’t imagine the Hell.

 

When I lived in Dearborn,

there was a guy killed for his watch at a restaurant a block from my apartment,

to the north.

And a driveby shooting at another restaurant a block from my apartment,

to the west.

And so I moved,

because the shootings were too close to my apartment.

 

I remember when I lived in Fort Myers, Florida.  How frequent the gunshots were.

17 people shot in Fort Myers in the last year.

A shooting on Boy Scout Drive.

Yes, Boy Scout Drive.

 

And when I lived in Florida, a son murdered his father

in a house close to mine,

tried to bury his father in the backyard,

in the rain,

a neighbor looking out her window and seeing this.

Could you imagine looking out your window and seeing this?

 

And when I lived in Chicago, I remember talking to an extremely friendly theater artistic director who, less than a week later, would be murdered in his apartment.

And a murder in the apartment across the street from where a friend lived,

my friend pointing to which apartment it was.

 

I have no idea what’s so wrong with the world.

 

I wanted to be a Beat writer like Kerouac;

Instead, beat reporting.

Either way, I’m beat.

 

When I set out with the idea of going to every mass shooting in Michigan for a year,

often trying to get there as soon as I could after it happened,

even if the shooter hadn’t been caught,

I thought,

You know, I could be killed,

but I was called

to do it, honestly, even if it was painfully cold

on so many of those keelhauled nights where I could

have done something else, but I had no one.

The Garlic Festival took my girlfriend

in a way,

ex- now,

how

she was from France, found

America a bit disgusting, with its politics and violence

and violence and politics

and so she left

and I stayed.

Alone.

 

I have nothing

to lose

because I have

nothing.

 

I remember when I was a student at the University of Michigan

and I called in to get counseling

and the person on the other end of the phone made fun of me,

said in this mocking voice, “Oh, looks like someone needs a little attention.”

Honest to God.

This was a person in mental health care there.

I didn’t go.

I couldn’t get in anyway.

Wait lists that never end.

I’ve heard other complaints.

I went there, visited, recently, to see what kind of treatment I’d receive,

went to U of M’s Wellness Center

and the people there were rude,

telling me I had the wrong place,

just by looking at me,

judging I was too old

to be a student,

telling me this,

so I walked away

and thought of nontraditional students,

the discrimination of nontraditional students,

how often it’s later in life, maybe when you’re starting over, going to grad school, where you realize, ‘Well, maybe I should try therapy, it’ll be good for me,’ but then

to not be welcome.

 

Michigan is a nightmare.

Michigan is a struggle

and it’s coasting and floating on an inner tube on the Huron River when the people have faded behind me on the shore with their pot and loud music and barbecue smoke and their coughing and their laughing and

it’s the stillness of the river

where you float away

and the quiet comes

and the animals come out

on the shore

and the turtles on logs

and it’s so incredibly peaceful

and I look up at the sky

and God’s up there.

I’m sure of it.

God’s up there,

bleeding.

But God will survive

too.

 

And I thank God for every single person on this planet who’s kind.

I actually get a bit shocked nowadays when someone is kind to me.

I don’t expect it.

It jars me.

It reminds me of

goodness

and hope.

 

I hope Democrats start looking more to love,

and actually being brave enough to stop this gun epidemic, pandemic, disease, abuse.

 

The gun owners have blood on their hands, all.

Ha, they pluck out mine eyes.

Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood

clean from my hand?  No, this my hand will rather

the multitudinous seas incarnadine,

making the green one red.

 

I truly hope and pray

That we’ll prioritize mental health for men.

I know.  Again.  Controversial to say.

The “manosphere” holds no air.  Hypoxic masculinity.  You die there.

What I’m talking about is the revelation that America creates mass shooters.

It manufactures them.

It manages to

mandate it.

It maneuvers everything in its power to ensure we have men who are so lost, so angry, so unheard, so abandoned, so abused that they feel they have to turn to horror, terror.

The news loves to talk about ‘veterans’ with mass shooters,

the news fetishizes that,

but ignores the poverty of the mass shooters,

the abuse, the neglect, the abandonment of their histories.

Why?

 

I’ve heard too many therapists say they won’t work with men as patients.

Whenever I hear that, I always think in the back of my mind,

‘You’re creating mass shooters.’

You can’t abandon men.

Otherwise, horror rises.

 

One out of every six men are victims of sexual violence.

Except I’ve heard it’s higher—that it’s actually one third of all men are victims of sexual violence.

I’ve attended hundreds of hours of in-person and online lectures and classes on trauma and violence and how we counsel survivors and the conversation ignores men.  Always.

Always.

It just does.

I’m worried that there is so much violence against women

because there is so much violence against men

that no one seems to care about.

Loops loop.

 

Can I say this?

Can I say this if it will help?

If starting the conversation will help?

 

Help!

 

Online, I ask why there’s so much gun violence

and the responses are that it’s due to the alignment of some planet and some planet,

something like that, some astrology bullshit,

and someone else says something about prayer

and I’m disappointed, hoping for something real,

something specific, something accurate,

and I wonder if it’s too complex for social media

and it is.

 

After a year of doing this,

of talking to people

and searching

and researching

and analyzing

and reanalyzing

and thinking

and rethinking,

the issue of why we have so many mass shootings in America

is

 

the poverty

 

the racism

 

the absolutely inability to understand how violence/neglect/abuse affects men

 

the ridiculously sickening prevalence of guns

 

and the brutally difficult barriers to get mental health/therapy access.

 

And the complication that Republicans love guns, adore guns, are married to guns, brush their teeth with guns, shower with guns, make love to guns, kiss guns, kill with guns, drive guns, breathe guns, view stray bullets as the same as cigarette smoke (fuck if it harms other people)

 

and the complication that around 20% of Democrats own guns

and that it feels like Democrats are doing NOTHING to combat guns

that kill our children

more than anything else.

In the U.S., guns are made to kill children.

How can I say that?

Because that’s what they do.

Daily.

7 children killed by guns daily.

Daily.

Daily.

Daily.

 

If you’re a Democrat and you ever step foot into a Walmart,

you’re not a Democrat.

Do you know how many children have been killed by guns sold by Walmart?

Ban Walmart for life.

The store has blood all over its everything.

Bloodart.

Walblood.

Blood on its shampoo.

Power adapter blood.

Credit card blood.

Blood on its stacking mugs.

Dehumidifier blood.

Ice maker blood.

Water slide blood.

Blood bratwurst.

Ragdoll blood.

Blood Walton.

 

That’s it.

This is the end.

It’s been a year.

Seventeen mass shootings in Michigan.

In the last three days, we’ve had shootings in Jackson, Detroit, and Flint.

That’s impressive for Michigan, to only have three shootings in three days.

It’s usually more.

In the last three days, there’s only been one mass shooting in the U.S.  In Chicago.

At a gas station.

Where so many of the shootings were this year.

Guns.

Gas.

Gaza.

Guns.

Gas.

Gaza.

 

.

 

To the truly kind people of this world,

you are saving us

from Hell.

You are giving us glimpse of Heaven.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.  

Editor’s note: Ron Riekki covered every mass shooting in Michigan from July 2025 until today for The New Verse News.

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