THE OBLITERATOR

by Steve Rodriguez

"Supreme Leaders" by Nick Anderson

President Donald Trump has put the United States on the verge of war against Iran with the goal of ending that nation’s nuclear weapons program, less than eight months after proclaiming he had “completely and totally obliterated” that same program. —HuffPost, February 20, 2026

Back in ’71, during the spring semester of sophomore 
year, after receiving a long streak of D’s and F’s,
my geometry teacher surprises me with a quiz grade
of C+. I read the comment “good job” and for
one second revert to being a humble twerp,
suddenly contrite about previously 
disregarding each of his homework assignments.
 
Then that second passes, and I once again act
out the more familiar role of arrogant jock. 
From my seat, I shout out “Good job? Ha!  Admit it,
old man. I totally obliterated that loser quiz.” 
The bell rings.  As my fellow students depart,
I loudly repeat my point…“OBLITERATION.”  
 
Mr. Prebbles—a low IQ dope who closely
resembles one of Nixon’s crewcut aides—smiles
and responds with “I trust you have turned over
a new leaf, and that studying becomes a habit.”
I toss the quiz on his desk and demand he cross 
out the words “Good job” and replace them with something
 
like “You quite simply obliterated this quiz,”
and that the o-word be underlined with glitter. 
After mentioning the obvious—that high school 
teachers don’t stock such primary grade art supplies–
he shakes his head and asks me to leave the classroom.  
 
Later in fifth period, my English teacher  
smiles and refers to teacher lounge banter
mocking my awkward use of “hyperbole”
in math class. I tell her, “You’re no Shakespeare,” 
and that I alone will judge what is “hyperbole” 
and what can be deemed as “obliteration.”  
Miss Jones chuckles and seems to dismiss me 
as if she is both Funk and Wagnalls.
 
Not until much later in the afternoon do
I gain more clarity on the fine nuance
of language. While attempting to pitch my baseball
team to victory, I am overwhelmed by our
cross-town rivals who decide to tee off
on both my fastballs and curves, scoring ten runs in
two innings before Coach Funk yanks me away from
the mound. Yes, me!  Ace of the staff. Later, as we
 
suffer from a fifteen-run differential, and 
I am sitting disconsolate on the bench, Funk
offers me an assessment. “The last time someone 
got hit that hard was the day my B-17 
squadron obliterated Dusseldorf.” I nod,
reverting once again to that quiet, modest, 
humble self before retorting, “‘Obliterated’
may be too harsh a word.”  He snaps back, 
“Obliteration means to utterly destroy
 
or remove. From the Latin oblitteratus,
which refers to blotting out or erasing.”
Sure enough, that happens to be the last time I
pitch during my junior year. The coach finds ways
to keep me off the field. I am erased. 
Wiped off the map. Obliterated, so to speak. 
 
In the meantime, we win every remaining game 
while becoming league champions. Still, this account
is far from a lesson in adolescent humility. 
Later that summer, I devise a wicked pitch—
a breaking ball I term “The Obliterator.” 
So effective!  And I alone decide how much so.   
 

Steve Rodriguez is a retired U.S. Marine Corps officer and a retired high school English teacher. He resides in San Diego, CA.  

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.

MASS SHOOTING #7

3357 E. Holland Rd, Speedway, Saginaw, MI, Oct 4, 2025

by Ron Riekki

“All random, wasted, and dispersed”

—Theodore Roethke

“Against Disaster”

The clerk inside tells me she can’t make any comments.

I ask why forty people would be gathered outside at 1:30 a.m.

The clerk tells me she can’t make any comments.  I ask

 

how we lessen gun violence in black communities.

 

The clerk says she can’t make any comments.  I ask

if the loitering signs outside are new.  No, she says,

her only comment.  Outside, the simple sound of traffic.

 

Tires on asphalt.  Tires on concrete.  Tires on cement.

 

The clerks never want to make any comments.  Outside,

a girl with purple hair exits the Speedway.  I ask how

we lessen the violence.  She uses her car door as a sort

 

of shield.  “Let’s start talking about it,” she says.

 

She makes comments: “Mental health is a real thing.”

“Everyone is going through something.”  “Yes, it is

hard.”  “Put yourself in their shoes.”  “I have a child

 

to raise.”  She has a 7-year-old daughter.  She works

 

4 jobs.  She’s also a professional wrestler.  A fan of

Stone Cold Steve Austin and Triple H.  Later, I watch

her win a match online, wearing all purple swimwear,

 

blowing victory kisses to the crowd.  She talks of how

 

kids now need “baseball, basketball,” that sports save

lives, give positive outlets.  Next door’s a bp.  A clerk

inside makes comment after comment.  The shooting

 

didn’t happen where he worked, so he’s an open book.

 

And he seconds everything about sports, telling me

“the kids have nothing to do.”  Wearing a XXL black

t-shirt, “Dee,” his nickname, says “recreation” is key.

 

He says there’s no “swimming pools,” “no budget,”

 

that “the new generation is left with nothing.”  Later,

I find out the shooting was a 32-year-old and a 38-

year-old exchanging gunfire.  Two sisters, also in

 

their 30s, were shot.  The assumption is that these

 

shootings are being done by kids.  I find this out

later, though, can’t ask them what to do if it, really,

is adults shooting at adults.  I ask if it’s dangerous

 

being a clerk.  He says no, that people mostly come

 

in and play the lottery, do scratch-offs.  A woman

comes inside and does just that.  36 different options

for scratch-off tickets, names like STRIKE IT RICH,

 

LIONS, $2,000,000 LUCKY, JUNGLE CASHWORD.

 

Driving home, the billboards keep flashing GRAND

BLANC STRONG with a white lit candle to remember

the 5 killed and 8 injured at the September 28 shooting.

 

I drive to the church, where the shooting happened.

 

There’s a black-and-white sign there saying GRAND

BLANC BETTER TOGETHER.  To my surprise,

the church seems to be untouched, the front doors

 

fixed.  Online, it says the church is “permanently

 

closed.”  The church is lit up with lights.  I park.

I can’t believe how quiet it is.  I sit there, staring

at the nothing.  Between Grand Blanc and Saginaw,

 

both of the mass shootings, is Frankenmuth.  I go

 

there.  To decompress.  I’ve never been.  The town,

I find, is sort of Disney Euro.  Simulacra.  Hyper-

reality.  I get food at a restaurant with chalet-style

 

architecture.  Staff are dressed in lederhosen and

 

alpine hats, Oktoberfest dresses.  The entire time

I eat, a young boy sits at the front to greet guests.

Later, I realize the boy is actually a statue.  Near

 

the bathroom they’re selling strange small signs

 

saying: HUNTING: IF A MAN IS ALONE IN

THE WOODS, WITH NO WOMEN TO HEAR

HIM...IS HE STILL WRONG?  A toilet flushes.

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

TRANS FATS

by Chris Kaiser

This is not a real book. Its cover has been A-I generated at Shutterstock by The New Verse News to accompany this poem.

Trump falsely claims children being forced into gender transition ops at school in rambling fantasy-filled rally speech. —The Independent, September 9, 2024

I sent my boy to his fifth grade class 

and he returned a girl, 

apparently operated on by the school nurse,

without our permission, 

just like Trump predicted. 

The school also confiscated his backpack 

(or her backpack? I’m not sure. 

It was easier to imagine others 

with this woke problem). 

In his—ok, wait here while I ask 

my previous son what pronoun to use. 

He said she wants to play 

with his sister’s dolls, 

while she said he wants an operation too. 

I’m confused. 

And then my wife mentioned polyamory,

and I said, we already store our guns 

in more than one bunker. 

The book they confiscated from my son’s — 

wait here—

“Terry!” 

He said she wants to spell her name with an ‘i’.

The book they confiscated from Terri’s backpack was

“Trans Fats: The Real Story,”

which the school librarian, 

who moonlights as the science teacher, 

thought was about fat boys transitioning 

into skinny girls, 

and vice reversa. 

Though Trump railed against 

these secret surgeries as if they’re evil incarnate, 

I’m not so sure. 

Terri has since won All State 

in her youth softball league

and her sister is on track to win gold 

in boy’s figure skating.

Chris Kaiser’s poetry has appeared in Rattle, Eastern Iowa Review, Dissident Voice, Better Than Starbucks, and The Scriblerus, as well as in anthologies from Moonstone Press. His poetry also appeared in Action Moves People United, a music and spoken word project partnered with the United Nations.

HAZE

by Ron Riekki

            “a slight obscuration of the lower atmosphere, typically caused by fine suspended particles” 

—Oxford Languages 

 

“Shortly after the police report was released to KTSM, NMSU chancellor Dan Arvizu announced the men’s basketball program had been shut down for the remainder of the 2022-23 season.” 

—KTSM, February 12, 2023

 

 

My ex- went to NMSU. I visited it and, 

there, she started singing a song by 

 

Everything But the Girl, but changing 

the lyrics, so that instead it was, her 

 

voice beautifully off-key: NMSU, 

like the deserts miss the rain! So that 

 

‘And I miss you’ became the initials 

for her university, and she loved it there, 

 

she said. And I asked why and she said 

Because it was affordable. And I asked 

 

if there was anything else and she said, 

My friends were there. And I felt safe. 

 

And things change. Time flies. And in 

my mind, I go back in time so often. Some- 

 

times I think that’s what trauma is, this 

constant forcing of the mind back in time. 

 

When they hazed me in baseball—no, 

when Scott hazed me, when I just wanted 

 

to play baseball, came up behind me, 

pinned me to the ground, pressed into me, 

 

this future homecoming court member, 

the summer sun burning its light in my 

 

eyes, my arms Christed at my sides, 

and he’d spit, over and over, in my face, 

 

sucking it back into his mouth, no purpose 

except control, and his father was best friends 

 

with my father, the sickness of childhood, 

the dirt anxious below us, the tree branches 

 

trembling in the lack of wind, and when 

they hazed me in basketball—no, when 

 

Bud hazed me when I just wanted to play 

basketball, in a way similar to NMSU, 

 

in a way similar to Florida A&M, similar 

to Binghamton, the forced public nudity, 

 

then throwing me into a pool, and when 

I joined the military, it was like some 

 

infestation, how you don’t fear the quote- 

unquote enemy as much as you fear those 

 

around you, in your barracks, the blanket 

party done on a kid ten bunks down from 

 

mine, how they came in the night and I 

woke to the sound of fists in the darkness 

 

and it wasn’t me, but it would be, later, 

the “Crucifixions” they did at my duty 

 

stations, tying you to a fence, reminding 

me of Matthew Shepard, and they’d take 

 

rotten food they’d left in the jungle heat 

for days, pour it over your head, insects, 

 

the clock, your wrists, the vomit, and 

the repetition, so often, and so many 

 

who didn’t even fight, how they came for 

me, in the night, because I did not want to 

 

reenact hell, how they’d come up behind 

you, duct tape your mouth shut, your 

 

arms, to the chair, wheel you down 

the hall, clatter you outside, transfer 

 

you to fence, your body a map, time 

a skull, hate a latrine, and they killed 

 

one of us, during training, murdered, 

Lee, his name, Lee, Midwestern, like 

 

me, and the “violent physical hazing” 

at the University of Michigan is VCU’s 

 

death is University of Missouri’s student 

who’s blind now, can’t walk, can’t talk 

 

now, and the list of incidents, the copious 

amounts of alcohol, the unconscious-and- 

 

flown, the hit-his-head, and asphyxiation, 

the collapsed-lung, the polytrauma, and 

 

this is normative? and I see them, see 

their photos, of those killed, yearbook 

 

photos, where they glow, dressed in black, 

new glasses, smiles of hope, hair trimmed 

 

yesterdays, majors of Aviation, Engineering, 

Ecology, Middle East Studies, Social Work, 

 

and I’m teary looking at their photos, this 

sudden caesura,  the blank page,  knowing 

 

at least one university hazing death per 

year, from 1969 to now, with hundreds 

 

of deaths since 1838, with the most deaths 

at Sigma Alpha Epsilon at the University 

 

of Alabama. And this isn’t a poem. It’s 

a warning. And this isn’t a poem. It’s 

 

a war. And this isn’t a poem. It’s non- 

fiction. And this isn’t a poem. It’s hell. 

 

And I go to the college to complain about 

this and someone warns me, telling me 

 

not to do it, that I’m just wasting my time, 

and I do it anyway, and I’m in his office, 

 

and I explain to him how I’ve been 

harassed on this campus, and how I know 

 

others are being too, that it’s happening 

here, now, and he listens—no, he doesn’t 

 

listen, he hears me, sort of, and says, 

Look, I’m drowning with complaints. 

 

What do you want me to do about it? 

And I tell him that I want it to stop, 

 

that we need it to stop, and he looks 

at me and says, OK.  How? And I 

 

tell him that that’s his job and he sighs 

and says, OK, thanks for stopping in 

 

and I ask him what he’s going to do 

and he starts escorting me to the door 

 

and I repeat it again and he says, 

You want me to be honest? And I say 

 

that I do. And he says, Nothing. 

And the door closes behind me. 

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