Peter Gregg Slater

BREAKING NEWS

Not again? Yes, again!
Some psycho shot up
Carson Tool and Die
way out on the pike.

Worked there
the Xing classes say
for a day, a week,
a month, a year, a decade.

Listen to this!
Some psycho lost it
shot up the Carson plant,
been on that hilltop forever,
wounding two, killing five.

Almost always a man
rarely a woman.
We all know why.

Have you heard?
Some psycho exploded
on the night shift at Carson’s,
the carnage splashing the news—
for 24 hours.

We wait and wait now
for the next crackup out of the blue,
raging bloody.
Will happen any day. Any time.

Please don’t let it be me.


Peter's YouTube reading of "Breaking News"


Peter confesses" "First thing one morning, I turned on the kitchen radio and immediately heard about a mass shooting in a distant state. 'Not again!' I shouted. Later, I wondered about the shooter. Was the guy a wacko for years, or just an ordinary person, one of us, who somehow suddenly snapped?"


PETER GREGG SLATER, at one time an English major, jumped ship to become a historian. He has taught history at several institutions, including Dartmouth College and the University of California, Berkeley. But something literary is in his DNA as he published his first short story while serving as the chair of a history department. In retirement, he has come full circle, devoting himself to creative writing. His work has appeared in DASH, Workers Write!, The Satirist, Masque & Spectacle, and WordSwell.