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| Three people have died in a series of shootings at three sites near Hesston, Kansas, including a lawn care products factory, authorities said Thursday night. Photo: Fernando Salazar, AP via USA Today, Feb. 25, 2016 |
When the dogs attack
your dog,
in the new park, you spend the whole time
wondering
if you are wrong, if somehow you
misunderstood.
The light is beautiful
that night:
a hollowed shell.
No one thinks of how the thing
that lives inside
gets boiled alive.
Buried.
Frozen. There
are manuals, online.
You start
shaking
when you see how the dogs’ mouths
are full of blood, you
started screaming
at some point, oh,
no, my god, although you don’t
believe in gods.
Thursday night, another man
shot everyone
like it was in
another language where this thing
just sometimes happens.
People tried
to explain:
the soft
warm evening, what he ate, the curling
screams
like lobsters boiling,
bumping dully
in the pot.
Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco lives in California's Central Valley, where she works as a librarian. Her chapbook Various Lies is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.