by Zumwalt
 |
Christa Pike's lawyers shared a statement after her botched execution. "Tonight the State of Tennessee once again failed to carry out a lawful execution," the attorneys said. "We take no pleasure in being right, but the concerns raised by Ms. Pike proved to be true: difficult vein access, blown veins, degraded pentobarbital, no emergency medical care available when things inevitably go wrong, all under a protocol that remains veiled in secrecy. "Christa is being treated at a nearby hospital," they said. "We have not been informed as to her condition." —The Tennessean, September 30, 2026. See also The New York Times and The Guardian. |
A mouse isn't much
so I threw it away
and replaced it with another.
I don't suppose dropping it
did it any good.
Or the time I threw it at the wall,
that day the county said Spike
should be put down, not locked away—
put away for good.
I don't have the technical skill
to fix a mouse. I just discard them.
Recently, I read about AI bots going rogue.
People smarter than me don't toss them out.
They just study what went wrong,
make them better if they can.
I wouldn't be so forgiving.
I would terminate immediately.
I can relate to Governor Lee
denying clemency to a woman
who clearly malfunctioned.
Too many issues. Her mom pickling
the brain of an embryo that malformed
into a poisoned fetus evicted
from the womb as a sabotaged Christa
beaten, abused as a toddler,
padlocked in a chicken coop with armies of spiders,
a pre-schooler forced to perform blowjobs
struck and tortured by her father,
her mother's boyfriends,
raped at eleven, bouncing between
schools, homes, cities, states,
interspersed with moments shared
with a half-decent grandma
killed off by cancer,
a corpse abandoning a preteen;
a child with common sense beyond her years
seeking relief through a Tylenol overdose
quickly agreed on by experts as planned suicide—
since who cries for help when there is none?
so I threw it away
and replaced it with another.
I don't suppose dropping it
did it any good.
Or the time I threw it at the wall,
that day the county said Spike
should be put down, not locked away—
put away for good.
I don't have the technical skill
to fix a mouse. I just discard them.
Recently, I read about AI bots going rogue.
People smarter than me don't toss them out.
They just study what went wrong,
make them better if they can.
I wouldn't be so forgiving.
I would terminate immediately.
I can relate to Governor Lee
denying clemency to a woman
who clearly malfunctioned.
Too many issues. Her mom pickling
the brain of an embryo that malformed
into a poisoned fetus evicted
from the womb as a sabotaged Christa
beaten, abused as a toddler,
padlocked in a chicken coop with armies of spiders,
a pre-schooler forced to perform blowjobs
struck and tortured by her father,
her mother's boyfriends,
raped at eleven, bouncing between
schools, homes, cities, states,
interspersed with moments shared
with a half-decent grandma
killed off by cancer,
a corpse abandoning a preteen;
a child with common sense beyond her years
seeking relief through a Tylenol overdose
quickly agreed on by experts as planned suicide—
since who cries for help when there is none?
Zumwalt’s poetry examines the intersection of identity, instability, and the mechanics of perception. Recent work has appeared in The New Verse News and Eunoia Review.
