The poems posted here have been curated specifically for the website and don’t appear in the poetry anthology. If you’d like to submit a poem about gun violence in America for consideration on this site, please see our submission guidelines in the “Other Voices” drop menu.
By Lisa Norris I can’t look at the markers on the field for the slain who were shot, and last night’s production of Lear, when good Gloucester’s eyes were removed, is in my brain on continuous loop: once, I was happy here, wasn’t I? I grew tomatoes, raised children and taught people who went on … More Revisiting Virginia Tech
By Allison Blevins when a school becomes a front line, it helps to imagine my children at their desks still as stones. It helps me to remember that some bullets were meant for some children like prophecies inscribed on metal: name, location, hair and eye color. I imagine my own children startled into the … More On Days Like This Day,
By Conor Kelly About the Author Conor Kelly is an Irish poet, living in a rural town in West Clare. He has had poems printed in Irish, British, American and Mexican magazines.
By Jen Karetnick Don’t offer me the Chic Lady Handgun with a barrel the color of bubblegum, faux alligator case included to carry with tests and term papers done, nor the Ruger with recoil reduced, semi-automatic, raspberry hued, to be hung from a bra holster like fruit until an active shooter has been … More How to Dis/Arm a Female Teacher
By Cintia Santana “How Does This Compare with Other Mass Shootings? —New York Times, June 12, 2016 On one hand, I hold the iPhone, all news made small, and on the other, your hand, by which I also mean the memory of your breath, tracing my face as morning opened around us. How do I … More Scales
Dispatch from this Summer Gypsy moth: Lymantria dispar dispar By Elizabeth Bradfield Frayed, moth-eaten, vulnerable. Those Florida dancers gunned down & my young self coming out dancing & pathetic fallacy (dispar dispar) crawls all over June’s fresh oaks, gnawing them to a February canopy. The news, bad oracle, gnaws fact & rumor. Above, unrelenting mastication, … More Dispatch from this Summer
By Emari DiGiorgio It might rile up the bull, but any gypsy grandmother who worships the cornicello knows red resists evil. Hidden beneath clothes like a narc’s slim-fit Kevlar vest, or on the outside like a badge. On the day I might die, I spurn sensible shoes. I once sprinted eight long Manhattan blocks in … More What to Wear on the Day I Might Die
By Amorak Huey If I say everything is a gun you have to say yes, and the gun is always going off. If I say someone could get hurt, you have to say yes, and that’s what it means to be alive. I say, does it have to be like that? You say yes, and … More Yes, And
By Dick Allen On December 27, 2017, the poet Dick Allen passed away. He had a long and productive writing career, publishing several collections including, most recently, This Shadowy Place, which won the 2013 New Criterion Poetry Prize, as well as Present Vanishing: Poems (2008). Former poet laureate of the state of Connecticut, Allen retired … More Solace
By Roshie Xing i. Innocence The first time it happened, I was ten. Almost ten and a quarter, I liked to protest. Numbers are such a big deal when you’re young. It was near the end of the day when they herded us into the auditorium, the sound of children chattering a fluid undercurrent of … More Again
