FOUL TROUBLE

by Tammy Smith

Cartoon by Clay Jones

 

I know nothing about the Knicks
other than they’re from New York

and haven’t won a championship
since 1973. I know even less

about the Spurs. Game 3 at the Garden

means more traffic—

something I can’t ignore.
Maybe that’s why I’m paying
extra attention to the hype, the energy
around the rim so electrifying

I decide to watch, for the first time—
the whole game from my living room

wearing fuzzy bunny slippers 

with soft pink pajamas. 

There’s no point pretending

I understand the game

or its rules—

but I know players
who commit fouls get punished
with free throws. 

A flagrant foul sounds poetic,

as satisfying as the swish

of a slam-dunk—but the notion

of excessive contact
as a boundary violation 

makes me want to learn more

about why David Hollander thinks

basketball can save the world. The court, 

layups, turnovers, every rebound--

offense and defense, skill and hustle

underscores that legendary mantra:

you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take,

which has everything and nothing

to do with deciding who gets benched,

or booing Trump.

 

Tammy Smith is a poet and licensed clinical social worker from New Jersey. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The New Verse News, Paterson Literary Review, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Thimble Literary Magazine, LIPS, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, and elsewhere. She received honorable mentions in the Journal of New Jersey Poets 2026 Poets Prize and the 2026 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards.

CORRESPONDENTS’ DINNER VILLANELLE

by Erin Murphy

Cartoon by Clay Jones

Our first thought: the shots were staged,

erasing the day’s news and memes.

Flip the script, turn the page.

 

Distract from wars, inflation, climate change,

grift, dementia, les dossiers d’Epstein.

Our first thought: the shots were staged.

 

Keep the masses entertained.

Let them eat vape and binge TV.

Flip the script, turn the page.

 

In late-stage cannibalism, feed rage

into the insatiable bigotry machine.

Our first thought: the shots were staged.

 

What matters not is how it plays

in real life but on the screen.

Flip the script, turn the page.

 

Humans caged, history razed.

All the world’s a crime scene.

Our first thought: the shots were staged.

Flip off the script, burn the page.

Erin Murphy's most recent books are Human Resources, Mother as Conjunction: Lyric Essays, and Fluent in Blue, winner of the 2025 American Book Fest Best Book Award in Poetry. Swoon: New and Selected Poems is forthcoming in June.

OUT OF SERVICE

by Jan Steckel

Ghost cars with their lights still on, 
radios blaring, windows shattered,
litter the streets. It's like the rapture, 
drivers disappeared. Alex Pretti's
beautiful baritone talks about service,
sacrifice, freedom that isn't free.
He's reciting his own epitaph,
just doesn't know it yet.
Boy Scout, choir boy, runner, biker, 
named his dog Joule after a unit of energy.
Someone needs to immortalize him
in a song, like Joe Hill. I'm tired
of snuff videos featuring our best
and brightest. Bone-weary
of tinpot dictators, bantam Nazis 
in custom greatcoats. Alex was a lover
who was loved, cared for people,
made them laugh. Now he's meat.
The pathologist will crack his chest,
weigh his heart, find it lighter 
than a feather. Joe Hill tells Joule,
"Hear that? He's coming."
All the ghost cars flash their lights
in time to the whistles and shots.

Ghosts and Oceans, Jan Steckel's latest book, is a collection of short fiction. Her poetry book The Horizontal Poet won a Lambda Literary Award. Her books Like Flesh Covers Bone, Mixing Tracks, and The Underwater Hospital also won awards.

MASS SHOOTING #4

2700 block, W Michigan Ave, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI, September 20, 2025

by Ron Riekki

I see fog: the feel of San Francisco,
of swamp, of isolation, of Gothic,
 
of Dickens, of Doyle, of death.
A girl's dressed Goth, smoking
outside the bar across the street.
The air is thick with cannabis,
 
so much so that I feel high just
walking.  I get food.  While I
wait, I go to other businesses
nearby.  There’s multiple, all
 
supplying either food or drink,
signs with a bright white VAPE
and a thick red BEER/LIQUOR.
I’ve come late, to get a feel for
 
what it was like at the time that
the shooting happened.  This is
Michigan’s fourth mass shooting
in two months.  We’re borderline
 
on campus/off campus.  I wonder
where in the parking lot that it
happened.  I go to a pizza place
while waiting for my food.  They
 
nod that, yes, they know about
the shooting.  It happened at
the building next door.  I go
across the street, to a bar, ask
 
for water.  They give me some.
I talk to the security guard, ask
him if he knows anything about
the shooting.  He points where
 
it happened, across the street.
I ask if he’s worried about any
more shootings.  No, he says.
I go in Two Fellas Grill.  Its
 
name reminds me of the film
Goodfellas.  “Layla.”  Tommy
gets whacked.  The place is
empty, totally empty, except
 
four employees.  I ask if they
heard about the shooting.
They look me over.  Why’m
I asking about the shooting?
 
One guy looks to see what’s
in my hand.  I’m holding
a notebook.  I don’t take
notes.  The guy says he
 
took video, of the aftermath.
Was he here when it happened?
No.  But he lives nearby.
He came right away.  I ask
 
what caused it.  A girl
behind the counter says
there’s lots of rumors,
maybe gang-related, or
 
maybe somebody got
jumped.  She says that
Kalamazoo used to be
the 4^th most dangerous
 
city, but now it’s 2^nd.
The guy says changes
are going to happen.
I ask what.  He says,
 
Changes.  Like what?
He says that’s being
talked about, but they
used to close at 4 a.m.,
 
but now they’re going
to close at 3 a.m. instead.
I ask about cameras and
he says they have those
 
already.  I tell him that
there must be incentive,
since this is campus and
there’s students to protect.
 
He says we have to protect
everyone.  He asks if I’m
going to order anything.
I can tell he’s done.  I go
 
back to the place where I
ordered food.  I eat next
to another table covered
with boxes, old computer
 
screens, a big bag of soy
sauce, the feel more like
warehouse than restaurant.
I talk to the workers there—
 
a chef, a driver, a guy who
takes the orders.  One says
he lives in Battle Creek, sees
shootings all the time, more
 
than I can count on my hands,
that’s for sure.  I ask what can
be done to lessen the violence.
It can’t be helped.  I ask if there
 
is anything we can do.  All three
say that they don’t think anything
is going to change gun violence
in America.  Nothing.  There’s
 
a tip jar nearby that’s marked:
Tiperoni 😊 Thank yoooooooo
The phone rings constantly.
Nobody eats inside, but Door
 
Dash people keep coming in
and out.  The guy asks me if
I want to see the footage of
the shooting.  I’m stunned.
 
You have it on camera?  He
pulls out his phone and in
a few seconds I’m seeing it
happen in front of me.  It’s
 
five black kids.  Children,
really.  Looking high-school
age.  And it lasts for just
seconds.  Maybe eight or
 
so seconds.  An ugly brawl
where fists are flailing and
it feels a bit like four against
one, except it’s too chaotic
 
to fully know who fights who
and quick, incredibly quick,
so quick that I have him show
me the footage three times:
 
one of them pulls out a gun
and starts shooting.  One kid
shot in the stomach and three
shot in the feet.  This is what
 
I realize—how incredibly
fast someone can pull out
a gun.  Another revelation:
how having a gun doesn’t
 
protect you.  He fired five
shots before I even realized
he’d pulled a gun out.  Where
did he get it? I ask.  It seems
 
like it just magically appeared.
From his pants, the guy says,
taking his phone back.  That’s
how fast, in three seconds, less,
 
you can shoot four people.  I
pull out my phone, time it.
It’s maybe two seconds and
four people have been shot.
 
And all of them could have
concealed weapons/permits
and it would do nothing.
We have this conversation
 
just ten days after Charlie
Kirk’s debating gun violence
was ended by gun violence
and I ask the three in front
 
of me, saying, you must have
some ideas of solutions, and
they say, no, there is nothing
we can do, and I push them
 
on this, but they stick to it,
this feeling of hopelessness.
I leave.  I’ve gone to three
other mass shootings and
 
people there have had ideas
of how to fix things, but now
the feeling is there’s nothing
we can do.  I go to the parking
 
lot and have this revelation that
the shooting happened inside
the restaurant.  I had just seen
the footage.  I’d assumed it
 
was in the parking lot, but
it was inside.  I get in my car.
A podcast starts up.  It’s three
men talking in toxic hyper-
 
masculine language.  I turn
it off.  I start to drive down
the street.  A car is alongside
me, going the exact same speed.
 
They’re in the passing lane, but
they don’t pass, just riding along-
side.  I make a turn I don’t need
to make.  I stop to get some gas.
 
The signs here say:
5 C OFF A GAL
REWARDS
and
 
2 SLICE S OF
P IZZA   &
L G  BI G GLUP
4 W  RE WARDS
 
I’m feeling depressed, but I laugh
at the word “GLUP.”  I pay, sit
down and look up to see another
sign on a pawn shop nearby:
 
GUNS &
AMMO

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

POWDER KEG

by Mark Danowsky

Let me tell you why you're here. You're here because you know something. What you know you can't explain, but you feel it.
—  The Matrix
 

I wake with teeth clenched
 
I find myself holding my breath
 
We’ve pitted brother against brother
too long
 
In the end, it doesn’t even matter
who starts a war
 
They call it suicide by cop
when a gunman refuses to disarm
 
Sondheim reminds us
we lionize assassins
 
A conservative leader insists
The Left has choices
 
False prospect  
for a bloodless revolution
 
Shots fired

Mark Danowsky is Editor-in-Chief of ONE ART: a journal of poetry. He is the author of four poetry books. His latest poetry collection is Meatless (Plan B Press). Take Care is forthcoming from Moon Tide Press in 2025.

OUTLIER

by Bonnie Proudfoot

Cartoon by Clay Jones

Outside, the chirping of birds is erased

by sirens and the latest newsfeed delivers

the latest news, the camera goes back

to school for this one, what a bitch,

some shy 15-year-old, his heart tethered

to his gun, uses lead for his brand of graffiti,

he wants to be a daredevil, a showstopper,

a level up in the (anti-) social strata

Columbine, Sandy Hook, Parkland,

new codes for manhood. Maybe

he was always an outlier,

maybe instead of a pet ocelot,

his dad bought him a Black Friday pistol,

he posts his picture on Facebook the next day

some ephemeral way to prove that

someone loves him.

 

In the hallway, the slaughter.

Bullets crisscross the walls,

Bodies left to bleed out on the floor,

outside a classroom door,

a voice calls, It’s ok, bro,

it’s the police you can come out now,

But the other students

have too much skin in the game,

stagger out the back window, shake. We

see the flowers, a few more crosses

on the roadway, messages of what’s

at stake. Meanwhile in America,

Kyle Rittenhouse walks free,

Parkland students protested,

but some in the US Congress denied

that shooting even happened. We

will see gun sales spike before Christmas,

Today, it’s hunting season in Ohio,

shots ring out in the woods,

the birds become silent. Sometimes I

can’t tell where the shots are coming from,

where they are headed.

Bonnie Proudfoot is a recipient of a Fellowship for the Arts in Creative Writing from the West Virginia department of Culture and History, and has had fiction and poetry published in The Gettysburg Review, Kestrel, Sheila-Na-Gig, Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel, and other journals. Her first novel, Goshen Road, was published by Swallow Press in January of 2020, and was selected by the Women’s National Book Association for one of its Great Group Reads for 2020.  The novel was also long-listed for the 2021 PEN/ Hemingway award for debut fiction.

JACOB IN KENOSHA

by Marilyn Peretti






 Now it’s Jacob

and his little boys
    saw it all
    from the back seat
the 7 shots
    to their Daddy’s back
as he got into the car

7 shots
    into the lifeline
    his spine
and he cannot walk

Now it’s Jacob

Whose Daddy will it be
    next week?


Marilyn Peretti, poet near Chicago, dreads the news every day.

YES, THEY SOW GUNS INTO THE BELLY OF THIS WORLD

by Ariana D. Den Bleyker





You cannot sow leaves back to a tree,
unpluck the plume of an eagle.
When words begin to rot the tongue,
those words cannot be swallowed back.

There is a dish to hold the sea,
a brassiere to hold the sun,
a compass for the galaxy,
a voice to wake the dead.

But this is the silence between us.
And this is why there will be no nest.
Because this is a relationship
between a bird & a gun.

Shots burst out into a crowd;
and, we saw the red-hot glint,
watching & crying & asking
that question over again.

Talons fall from the sky,
settle, & turn to rust. I hate you,
I think, as you shoot me
to death with a rifle in my face:

Born to pull the trigger.
Born to light the match.
Born to see the blood.
Born to steal the hope.

You feel rage & there are bodies
on the floor, me, dying,
almost dead, knees stuck
together with feathers & blood.

One gun to hold the bullets;
one finger to pull the trigger.
Truth wears everyday clothes.
Tufts crimson as sunset pass us by.


Ariana D. Den Bleyker is a Pittsburgh native currently residing in New York’s Hudson Valley where she is a wife and mother of two. When she’s not writing, she’s spending time with her family and every once in a while sleeps. She is the author of three collections, including Wayward Lines (RawArt Press, 2015), the chapbooks Forgetting Aesop (Bandini Books, 2011), Naked Animal (Flutter Press, 2012), My Father Had a Daughter (Alabaster Leaves Publishing, 2013), Hatched from Bone (Flutter Press, 2014), On Coming of Age and Stitches(Origami Poems Project, 2014), On This and That (Bitterzoet Press, 2015), Strangest Sea (Porkbelly Press, 2015), Beautiful Wreckage (Flutter Press, 2015), Unsent (Origami Poems Project, 2015), The Peace of Wild Things (Porkbelly Press, 2015), Knee Deep in Bone (Hermeneutic Chaos Press, 2015), Birds Never Sing in Caves (Dancing Girl Press, 2016), Cutting Eyes from Ghosts (Blood Pudding Press, 2017), Scars are Memories Bleeding Through (Yavanika Press, 2018), A Bridge of You (Origami Poems Project, 2019), Even the Statue Weeps (Dancing Girl Press, forthcoming 2019), and Confessions of a Mother Hovering in the Space Between Where Birds Collide with Windows (Ghost City Press, forthcoming 2019). She is also the author of three crime novellas, a novelette, and an experimental memoir. She hopes you'll fall in love with her words.

MIRROR, MIRROR

by Jennifer Hernandez 

The single lines in the following poem are from Justine’s lecture “The Mirror Effect.”

for Justine Damond

Mirror her moves, sun salutation, cat and cow, warrior one, child's pose.
Mirror her breathing, peaceful expression, bright smile, calm voice.

The universe reflects back the energy you send out.

Mirror her concern, screams in the alley, a possible assault.
Mirror her fingers tap 9-1-1, watch out the window waiting.

We are all connected through a benevolent force.

Mirror her light footsteps, open the back door, step outside.
Mirror her strides to the police car, her shock at shots fired.

The quantum world is a world of unknowns and unpredictability.

Jennifer Hernandez lives in Minnesota where she works with immigrant youth and writes poetry, flash, and creative non-fiction. Much of her recent writing has been colored by her distress at that which appears in her daily news feed. She is marching with her pen. Recent work appears in Anti-Heroin Chic, Dying Dahlia, TheNewVerse.News, Rise Up Review and Writers Resist.

TUBULAR WEAPON

by Kristina England





I.

No one knows what she was thinking.
How could we?
Half of us are still trying to understand
ourselves
never mind some woman
who drove through a barrier.
The world is full of barriers
anyway.

II.

A gun is designed to discharge bullets.
A car is used to transport.

Place these two objects together
create friction
a chase
a bang bang bang
that leaves people ducking.

III.

Crazy, people say...

to open fire on a car
to keep driving
to be an onlooker

IV.

An officer empties his gun
stumbles home through the headlines
reaches down for his toddler
kisses his lil’ chub-chub.

He thinks of the confined gas within his gun
how he released it into moving windows
that sometimes a tubular weapon
can protect the many
yet leave a child motherless.

He goes about his evening
barely able to sleep
reloads the device in the morning
because the next time could be different
it always is

and he is so close to hearing
his daughter say the words -
“dad”, “daddy”, “dada”.


Kristina England resides in Worcester, Massachusetts. Her poetry and fiction is published or forthcoming in Extract(s), Gargoyle, New Verse News, The Story Shack, The Quotable, and other journals.