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David confesses:"My poem isn't so much about abortion as it is people willing to believe anything, even in the face of a crime, to support their own beliefs, and how I've grown tired of individuals who have no critical thinking whatsoever."
DAVID CRANMER’s poems, short stories, articles, and essays have appeared in publications such as Punk Noir Magazine, Live Nude Poems, Needle: A Magazine of Noir, LitReactor, Macmillan’s Criminal Element, and Chicken Soup for the Soul. His debut chapbook, Dead Burying the Dead Under a Quaking Aspen, is now available. He’s a dedicated Whovian who enjoys jazz and backgammon. He can be found in scenic upstate New York where he lives with his wife and daughter.
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David confesses:"This poem is based on a true crime that impacted me not just in the senseless, horror of the murder but the community’s inept social media responses. New York State describes a child under the age of 18 who does not attend school, or behaves in a way that is dangerous or out of control, or often disobeys his or her parents, guardians or other authorities, as a Person In Need of Supervision or ‘PINS’.”"
DAVID CRANMER is the editor of the BEAT to a PULP webzine. His writing has appeared in publications including 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.
A skilled green thumb, with weathered
caring hands and earth-crusted fingernails
is hunched over, tending his gladiolus-filled acreage.
Neighbors see him among tall, color-studded stalks
of purple, red, white, and yellow—dazzling and swaying—
as he prunes and weeds the days along.
But evil slides at bent angles, unnoticed in the light,
—a hitcher invited in for respite delivers no mercy,
and behind shuttered windows, strikes.
"This doesn’t happen here?" a village pines in shock,
learning a fellow resident had been bound,
gagged, and bludgeoned with a rock in his own workshop.
A gut-churning contradiction to a peaceful life.
Thirty-five years on, his murder remains unsolved
—and the grand gladiolus beds are another's yard,
fenced off and grassy with sunny dots of dandelions.
A gardener had lived here and now he is gone,
but those who knew Hugh Chaffin remember
how he walked the rows and rows of dancing blooms.
David reads "Hugh Chaffin":
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David confesses:"When I was a teen, our next-door neighbor was murdered. He was a kind, old man who had been invited over to our home on several occasions. On the evening he was killed, our family was watching The A-Team and when we learned what had happened, I had a hard time mentally making the juxtaposition between the cartoonish program with the horrific reality."
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.
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David confesses:"Some will read a killing has happened, and they should, though perhaps, there's more bubbling about—another story beneath the surface."
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.
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.
