David Cranmer

THE GOOD, THE KIND, THE PEACEFUL

From the echo chamber of a Gab outpost,
the coward was hated up.
“Screw your optics, I’m going in,” he wrote
to like-narrowminded.
Armed with multiple weapons, including a Colt AR-15 rifle, he stormed the synagogue, his brain-twisted ‘battlefield,’ and murdered,
the good, the kind, the peaceful.

Malevolence defiled the Tree of Life, spilling blood of congregants gathered for Shabbat morning services, among them were brothers David and Cecil Rosenthal and 97-year-old Rose Mallinger. Later, Rabbi Myers would recount the haunting screams of Bernice Simon as her husband Sylvan of sixty plus years is shot before her, until he hears something even more deafening ... her silence.
11 killed, 6 injured,
the good, the kind, the peaceful.

This horror was not perpetrated alone.
Hate didn’t conveniently slip through a rip in the fabric of time
or arrive fully formed out of a vacuum of space.
White nationalists, vitriolic alt-right pundits, and racist sycophants propelled the ammunition that took away Daniel Stein, Richard Gottfried, Joyce Fienberg, Jerry Rabinowitz, Melvin Wax, and Irving Younger,
the good, the kind, the peaceful.

And yet, evil does not triumph over good.
At Allegheny General Hospital the wounded coward continued to shout,
“I want to kill all the Jews!” as he’s cared for by a Jewish nurse and a Jewish hospital president who checked in on him.
While the bonds of an already tight-knit community strengthen, a united front grows.
His battle is lost—succumbed to an ‘enemy’ armed with humanity,
the good, the kind, the peaceful.


David reads "the good, the kind, the peaceful":



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David confesses: "Writing letters to congressional and senate representatives allowed me to voice my concern over the mass shootings in our country, but poems allowed me to express my anguish over all the senseless, heartbreaking losses, like this poem devoted to the Tree of Life synagogue victims."

DAVID CRANMER is the editor of the BEAT to a PULP webzine and whose own body of work has appeared in such diverse publications as Needle: A Magazine of Noir, LitReactor, Macmillan’s Criminal Element, and Chicken Soup for the Soul. He's a dedicated Whovian who enjoys jazz and backgammon. He can be found physically in scenic upstate New York where he lives with his wife and daughter, and he can be found virtually on Twitter @BEATtoaPULP.