midwestern death song

last night

shots rang out

slicing August’s midnight miasma

a quivering queen city listened

as Cherokee bells

echoed over cobblestones

black swan feathers topping lost hopes

filling horse-drawn funeral carriages

eighteen shot

four dead

blood pooling at the base

seven screaming hills

four shootings in Cincinnati

ninety fatal minutes

national news coverage

backlit red images

of our violent infection

suffer do we

these slings & arrows

whispering sacred prayers

to a god unlistening

please make

every bullet fired

explode into a spray

of evening primroses