This week, Florida Poet Laureate and CL columnist Pete Meinke returns to verse, to process, react and respond to the shooting in Las Vegas in which a lone gunman armed with 47 weapons murdered 58 people and injured nearly 500 more before being killed himself by police. —Ed.
The Pulse of Vegas
Because it’s crazy! she cried Guns
everywhere even the ones
who hear voices in the attic
can buy semi-automatics
from patriotic Americans
in the NRA the true sons
of freedom and our nation’s
guardians though that seems problematic—
because it’s crazy
O my broken dears the fun’s
run out of you little skeletons
dancing in an ecstatic
rattle rained like sleet from sick fanatics
armed by ourselves who weep stunned
Because it’s crazy
