The Missouri Review

When we learned that Terry W. Thompson, of Zanesville, Ohio, released his menagerie of animals and committed suicide last month, we asked for poems written within 48 hours in response to the tragedy.  One submission came from author Roxane Gay.  Her poem:

Animals, they say,

are best kept in cages.

Wild things though, know

a cage is nothing

but steel on which

they can sharpen

their teeth.

Roxane Gay lives and writes in the Midwest.