SENATOBIA, JUNE 2026

by Eric Goldfarb

SENATOBIA, Miss.—People scattered in a Walmart parking lot on [last] Tuesday as law enforcement officers, who were wearing gas masks and lined up under the store’s grocery-side entrance, unleashed tear gas on the crowd that had gathered to protest the police killing of 1-year-old Kohen Wiley [pictured above]. Two days earlier on June 14, the young Black child died after a Senatobia police officer fired into a moving car, killing him and injuring the driver. Officers, who had been responding to a call alleging that someone had tried to steal a box of diapers, claimed that the car was driving toward the officer when he fired—a claim that some witnesses have disputed. —Mississippi Free Press, June 17, 2026

The report said: one box of diapers.

The report said: they saw the child first.

The report did not say what diapers cost,

only who was made to pay.

Eric Goldfarb writes poems and essays about the quiet reinventions that shape a life. His work appears or is forthcoming in ONE ART, Hippocampus Magazine, Third Wednesday, Midsummer Dream House, Panorama, and elsewhere. After decades in technology and private equity, he returned to the page. He lives with his wife in Atlanta.

KYIV/SAN FRANCISCO

by Susan Gubernat

Tanks roll in again, wheels oiled by the slick substances

of nightmare. Across the street, thousands of miles away,

the flower stall opens this morning, spreads its wares

all the way to the curb. Yellow tulips, blue hydrangea.

The flower seller, Ukrainian, must know her business,

as she knows her politics. Once I thought she was 

Russian. I’ve eaten my mistake again and again, buying

her flowers in all seasons: poinsettia, Easter lilies—

expensive but they survive beyond the supermarket brand.

Around her shop the stores have been looted of jewels,

of toothbrushes and toilet paper, but no one has stolen

her orchids, their cat mouths yawning, or the tiny cacti 

in small clay vessels a child might hold up, beg for,

as if she could carry home a star. I don’t have words

for the shopkeeper. I want to bury my face in her shoulder

and weep or cry out. Instead, we talk about how dried

protea blooms can last. You string the fresh ones upside

down. Like bodies of tyrants, I think, in the marketplace.

Susan Gubernat's most recent book The Zoo at Night won the Prairie Schooner prize and was published by the University of Nebraska Press. She lives in San Francisco.