Tag: gun violence

On the Road to Samarra

By Marissa Glover

                “I shall ride like the wind to Samarra . . . and Death will not find me there.”
                                                  —from the ancient fable The Appointment in Samarra

I met a man in Utah
with a bullet in his neck,
shot from a rooftop —
a coward’s distance
not like the lady in Minnesota,
killed up close by a gun
by the finger that pulled the trigger
by a person who didn’t know her:
dog lover, Girl Scout leader,
part-time worker in her dad’s
auto parts store

shot from a rooftop— 
a coward’s distance
like the D.C. sniper
like a desert drone drop
like the Devil of Ramadi
long-range equipment
with records over 10,000 feet
still no match for Boeing 767s
or 757s striking from the sky:
25,000 feet in a power dive

I met 3,000 people in New York,
20 children in Connecticut,
14 teenagers in Parkland, Florida
I met a man in Utah who died
never knowing he’d been hit,
and I met a man in Memphis
briefly conscious of it
I saw the dead already dead
riding in a convertible in Dallas
back in 1963—all travelers
in this one mad world, just people
on the road to Samarra,
same as you, same as me

Marissa Glover lives in Florida, where she’s busy swatting bugs and dodging storms. Her work has been featured in journals and anthologies around the world. Marissa’s poetry collections are published by Mercer University Press: Let Go of the Hands You Hold (2021) and Box Office Gospel (2023). Her third book of poetry, Some Intangible Mercy, will be released by MUP in early 2027. Follow Marissa on Instagram.

Photo credit: Wasfi Akab via a Creative Commons license.

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Point Blank

An Illustrated Poem by Jane Muschenetz 

An illustrated poem with text, image of a gun, and charts with gun violence statistics

MIT grad and former Bain Management Consultant, Jane Muschenetz arrived in the United States as a child refugee from Soviet Ukraine. She is a 2023 City of Encinitas Exhibiting Artist and winner of The Good Life Review 2022 Poetry Prize. Her debut poetry collection, All the Bad Girls Wear Russian Accents (Kelsay, 2023), was shortlisted for the Jacar Press Chapbook Prize. Jane is Director of Partnerships at San Diego Entertainment & Arts Guild and Co-Founder of the San Diego Chapter of Women Who Submit Lit. Connect with Jane’s work at her website, www.PalmFrondZoo.com, and in various publications. Follow her on social media @PalmFrondZoo.

1 Incident of firearm mortality per 100K population by global developed economies, https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2022-us-gun-violence-world-comparison/. M.McGough, K. Amin, N. Panchal, C. Cox, “Child and Teen Firearm Mortality in the U.S. and Peer Countries,” KFF.org, Jul, 2022; https://www.kff.org/global-health-policy/issue-brief/child-and-teen-firearm-mortality-in-the-u-s-and-peer-countries/; USA child+teen data from 2020.

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Duplex with Gun

By Dotty LeMieux

 

The gun tucked neatly in the large man’s waist
I avoid his stare, move slowly, lock the door

I move slowly out the door
Cap pistol held at the ready

The gun moves out in the large man’s hand
Children run fast across the lawn

I cross the lawn going pop pop pop
Children scream and then they drop

Children scream, I watch them drop
One by one, as the big man shoots

The children laugh, they jump up, shoot back
Harmless popping under the sun

The popping stops, the sun is gone
The gun tucked back in the large man’s waist.

 

Dotty LeMieux is the author of four chapbooks, Five Angels, Five Trees Press; Let Us Not Blame Foolish Women, Tombouctou Books; The Land, Smithereens Press, and most recently Henceforth I Ask Not Good Fortune, Finishing Line Press. A new chapbook is forthcoming from Main Street Rag, likely to appear in 2023. In the late 1970s to mid-1980s, she edited the eclectic literary and art journal Turkey Buzzard Review in the poetic haven of Bolinas, California. Her work has appeared in numerous print and online journals and anthologies, including Writers Resist. Dotty lives with her husband and two aging dogs in Northern California, where she practices environmental law and helps elect progressive candidates to office. You may read more at her blog.

The photograph, “Halloween at Gun World, Burbank,” is by Stephen Sossaman, a writer living in Burbank, California. His primary resistance work is within the peace movement.

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Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.