Experimental Writing On Recent Mass Shootings

Abstract

In 2017 the author published a poem about a mass shooting in Orlando where forty-nine people died. Two shootings in March 2021 in Atlanta and Boulder, where eighteen people total were killed, have since garnered national news media attention. But mass shootings are more common than nationally reported. A Wikipedia page, titled “List of Mass Shootings in the United States 2021,” states that there were over one-hundred shootings involving four or more victims in the first three months of this year. The author here uses a compare and contrast list, recent headlines and quotes from news sources, and speculative scenarios to consider again this highly familiar and durable trope in American news.