Animal Cruelty: A teen’s poem

In wonderful blog coincidences, as I was putting the finishing touches on the animal edit below yesterday afternoon, a woman called the newsroom to say that her daughter had written a poem about cruelty to animals. Somehow, the message got transferred to me.

We rarely publish poetry in our news pages, for a variety of reasons I won’t go into here, but the blog allows for stuff we don’t have room for in our news pages.

So I told the woman, Sandy Heupel, to send me her daughter’s poem. Her daughter, Rachael M. Heupel, is a freshman at Deer Park High School and wrote the poem as part of a power point presentation on dogfighting.

And here it is:

I AM A DOG FIGHTER
By Rachael M. Heupel

You laugh and watch me.
I fight your fights and win.
I am a dog.

You have pitted me against my brothers and sisters.
I holler for defeat.
I am in my blood.
I am dying and yet you make me fight.
You see me lying down.
Now I am slain in my own blood.
You yell at me to get up.
Can’t you see that I’m dead?
Or do I matter to you?

I have no voice.
My voice is no more.
I am in the ring never more.