SCHOOL SHOOTING

by Harold Oberman

Kentucky School Shooting Is 11th of Year. It’s Jan. 23. Clockwise from top left: Wake Forest University campus on the morning of Jan. 21, after a fatal shooting the night before; emergency crews responded to Marshall County High School after a fatal shooting on Jan. 23 in Benton, Ky.; law enforcement personnel gathered outside a high school in Italy, Tex., after a shooting on Jan. 22; police officers at the Net Charter School in New Orleans on Jan. 22 after a shooting. Credit Clockwise from top left: Ben Powell; Ryan Hermens/The Paducah Sun, via Associated Press; KDFW Fox4, via Associated Press; Emily Kask. —The New York Times, January 23, 2018

Two students dead, 12 other people wounded
in Kentucky high school shooting. 
—Headline in The Washington Post, January 23, 2018

Who even writes the story now?
Headline: “School Shooting . . .”
Is there a designee at a desk in the obit department
That fills in the blanks?
Blank dead.
Blank wounded.
Blank rounds from
Blank automatic weapons.
Insert rampage or chaos.
Insert tragedy and heartbreak and close-knit and unbelievable and backpack and student and child.
How do you describe the indescribable?
Form 2018.
Blank this shit.
Headline: “School Shooting . . .”
The ellipsis trail off like bodies.


Harold Oberman is a lawyer and poet living and writing in Charleston, S.C. His work has recently appeared in TheNewVerse.News.

OUR FLAG SPEAKS

by Sister Lou Ella Hickman

A homeless man on a park bench in Brooklyn. Credit Spencer Platt/Getty Images via The New York Times.

how many have I seen fall     countless
as every flag has carried into battle
yet you have not asked me
how I should be honored because of them
so I have remained silent  until    now
honor    the word  the thought  the ideal
that raises everyone to something greater  noble   true
however trite that may sound
so I would have honor in other words
those that give voice to the silenced
to speak for the few, the different . . .
even those who oppose your own heart’s path
I am only cloth and color    the value I have is from you
and when you Pledge  make  those words real
for I fly not just for those countless lost or maimed
but also for those whose living defeats them
for everyone whatever stripe or shade of flesh
standing is but a moment   a song  a brevity
let all this honor be your life time  your daily gratitude
for those I saw fall and die

Sister Lou Ella Hickman has been an all-level teacher and a librarian. Presently she is a freelance writer and a spiritual director. Her poems and articles have been widely published in numerous magazines. One of her poems was published in the anthology After Shocks: Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events edited by Tom Lombardo. Her first book of poetry she: robed and wordless published by Press 53, was released in the fall of 2015.