WHEN NAPTIME GOES PRIMETIME IN THE USA

by Jen Schneider

The holes left by 14 bullets that tore through their house during the nearly 8-hour police standoff in North Philly on August 15, 2019—which saw six officers shot but no one killed—were being patched up for free. Finally, their home would no longer serve as an unwanted reminder of the terror and trauma he felt after being trapped inside while more than 100 rounds were fired from directly across the street. Photo: Mayor Jim Kenney talks to Cynthia Muse, block captain on the 3700 block of N. 15th Street, and other neighbors LAYLA A. JONES / BILLY PENN November 7, 2019.

Police remained on the scene after a gunman was apprehended following the standoff on August 15, 2019, in Philadelphia. —WHYY

Late afternoon, right before naptime, the troubled marksman paced in a first-floor apartment. On the second floor, baby’s dog-eared picture book dropped, then bounced, on the hardwood floor. Fan whirrs stifled ground floor hollers. Gunshots sliced heavy air.  Bang. Crack. Thud. Momentary silence. More fire. Help. First-floor situation. Second-floor fear. Voices drifting through vents roused all. Four pairs of eyes, arms, legs, and sweat-drenched ears hid under freshly laundered-cotton sheets. Specks of yellow daffodils sprinkled among confetti bursts of green, red, and turquoise streamers shielded bodies that retreated into each other. Silence, then creaks in the back window.  Tap. Crink. Clank. Glass pane rose. “Police. This way. It’s okay. Baby first.”  Drops of tears, questions, and relief pooled on the hardwood floor. Four pairs of eyes, arms, legs, and sweat-drenched ears slid to safety, down freshly laundered cotton sheets. Bare soles—and souls—touched searing concrete. Block on lockdown.

Prayers for police. Salvation. No more guns. Questions. Unanswered. Sirens continued to roar.

Hours later, right before bedtime, we returned home. The television flickered. New nightmares. Naptime. On primetime. Our prayers. Our faces. Recorded. Replayed. All in 10-second clips.

Jen Schneider is an educator, attorney, and writer. She lives, writes, and works in small spaces throughout Philadelphia. Her work appears in The Coil, The Popular Culture Studies Journal, unstamatic, Zingara Poetry Review, 42 Stories Anthology (forthcoming), Voices on the Move (forthcoming), Chaleur Magazine, LSE Review of Books, and other literary and scholarly journals.

HIGH NOON

by Zev Shanken

Image credit: Gregory Ferrand for Education Week

1.

Then the good guy reaches for his hidden gun,
cries, “Take that, you wicked terrorists!”
After the commercial, he kills them all,
speaks modestly on the Evening News
about just doing his job as a citizen.

2.

Will Kane's new wife threatens to leave him
if he breaks his promise
and goes after Frank Miller. Kane says,
“Seems I gotta do this.” Loads his gun.
She leaves, but when she hears shots,
runs back and shoots a bad guy herself.

3.

A student I don't know walks into my class,
shouts an obscenity, turns and runs.
I give chase. Three flights down the stairs,
he stops, out of breath. I ask him his name.
No answer. I ask for his ID. No answer.
I demand that he come with me to the dean.
He doesn't move. The brat is damn lucky
I left my gun at the ranch.


Zev Shanken is a retired teacher of English and Film at High School for Health Careers and Sciences in Washington Heights, New York City. His chapbook, Al Het, was published by Blue Begonia Press, Yakima, WA, in 1996. He is a member of brevitas, an on-line poetry group devoted to the short poem. 

BAN ON MILITARY GEAR . . .

by Marjorie Maddox

except here? Last call
for chain-gangs-
in-training at this chain
bar and grill where each chain-
clad cult sparks shootouts
in a city of brotherly bonds
($1 million and counting),
as bloody as that 90’s Waco,
or trying, nine dead but riding
too fast toward that other road
block, those blasted
and blasting seventy-six bodies
in the siege that inspired
McVeigh, another chain-
reaction of cult-carnage.

History is heavy
on our backs
as are tire tread on a biker’s foot,
muscle-imposed taxes,
rival-enforced respect;
knives, ammo;
as are Bandidos and Cossacks lighting up
the ticking bombs of their lives,
revving up revenge in this parking lot
of smashed-in faces,
bashed-up corpses;
this past of bloody sorrow
and linked pain, ongoing narrative
of chains, chains, chains.


Director of Creative Writing and professor of English at Lock Haven University, Marjorie Maddox’s book, Local News from Someplace Else (Wipf & Stock 2013), focuses on living in an unsafe world. In addition, she has a new ebook, Perpendicular As I (Kindle version, Nook version).