Michele Battiste: 101st Note on Violence
Cast iron: iconic. Romantic
even. Well oiled. Seasoned. But far
too heavy. Fatal. Certainly. If wielded.
Determination or luck.
BBC: Kamala Harris’s Platform
Ms Harris released a detailed policy platform in early September offering voters a look at what a Harris-Walz administration might look like.
Ariel Dorfman: Judgement Day for America’s Worst Supreme Court Justice
Lady Macbeth Has Words for Clarence Thomas and His Wife Ginni from the Other Side of Death.
Kim Stafford: How to make money
Sell munitions to nations at war. Sell relief supplies
for distribution at war. Fly diplomats around to talk
about war. Pay speech-writers to equivocate about war.
Arlene Weiner: Only One Dead
Our son
in Tucson warned us we’d read
about a professor killed in his office,
shot by a former student.
George Yancy and H.A. Nethery Discuss White Supremacy and “White Innocence”
A conversation in response to the murder of three Black people in Jacksonville, Florida by a white supremacist
Svante Myrick: Armed and Afraid
As more senseless shootings claim lives, it’s time to turn away from apocalyptic rhetoric and focus on what actually makes us safer.
Richard Michelson: Angels with Guns Guarding the Gates of Heaven
My grandmother didn’t
live to see her youngest son, my father, murdered in a Brooklyn
gutter by a fifth generation, drug-addicted, unemployed house-
painter whose ancestors were dragged here like devils in chains.
Abby Zimet: Kids Are Begging, Begging, Begging For Their Lives
The shooting at Nashville’s Covenant School, which killed three kids and three adults, was one of 103 mass shootings already recorded this year; of those, 90 were school shootings.
Kim Ports Parsons: I Can’t Write a Poem with a Gun
a fox steps lightly into the yard,
and shakes off the dew from the meadow,
and cocks her head, nose quivering
Matthew J. Parker: The Era of Idiocy
I did over a decade in jails and prisons because a squad of Pence-like puritans felt it immoral of me to get high on anything other than the drooling drunkenness of alcohol, an endeavor not only baldly hypocritical but so too borderline absurd; a worldwide farce manifesting in the militarization of both the cartels and the police, all of which, of course, was and is more great news for arms dealers.
Nancy Krygowski: “Here’s a Partial List of Mass Shootings in the United States So Far This Year”
Here’s the full list of the people the murdered have kissed.
Here’s a pair of slippers made of birds’ beaks, ear plugs made of screams.
Matthew J. Parker: MMPI-5
It’s obvious to all (or damn well should be) that the background checks designed to prevent criminals and/or deeply disturbed individuals from purchasing weapons are pathetically deficient.
Derrick Z. Jackson: Scientists and Public Health Professionals Are Mobilizing Against Gun Violence
A report this spring by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health University said the nation has lost 1,357,000 victims to firearms in the last 40 years. That exceeds the number of soldiers killed in all the wars in which the United States has fought.
