Are You Carryin'?

“In an average year, roughly a hundred thousand Americans are killed or wounded with guns.”

“When carrying a concealed weapon for self-defense is understood not as a failure of civil society, to be mourned, but as an act of citizenship, to be vaunted, there is little civilian life left.”

From “Battleground America,” by Jill Lepore, THE NEW YORKER, April 23, 2012

Update

The last three weeks have been busy for me as a poet. On April 15, I joined about two dozen other poets for the launch of TOKEN ENTRY: NEW YORK CITY SUBWAY POEMS at Manitoba’s in the East Village. I have two poems in this anthology, which also includes such poets as Grace Paley, Billy Collins, Langston Hughes, and Hart Crane:

http://www.amazon.com/Token-Entry-York-Subway-Poems/dp/0980191696

On April 28 I taught a haiku workshop at the 5^th Annual Suffolk County Community College Creative Writing Festival:

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150815892143501&set=oa.10150873232851154&type=1#!/photo.php?fbid=10150815892243501&set=oa.10

The online journal RIGHT HAND POINTING chose my poem “Reënactment” as one of 12 poems for its special issue devoted to poems of no more than 30 words:

https://sites.google.com/site/51rhpissue/george-held

EYE SOCKET, an online poetry journal out of Portland, OR, features four of my poems in its May issue:

http://eyesocketjournal.blogspot.com/

Please check out my work and leave a comment at the site.