This poem considers two events that occurred only a few weeks apart: an earthquake, which couldn’t have been prevented, and an explosion/fire that was the byproduct of an industrial food system resulting from human choices. I wanted this poem to reflect the conflicting ways that humans think about domesticated animals, even animals of the same species — on the one hand, as kin; on the other hand, as capital (the origin of the word ‘cattle’).

Jenevieve Carlyn Hughes is a writer whose recent poems appear in Canary, Rockvale Review, and the anthology, In the Garden: Community Storytelling on Food, Ecology, & Place (Torrey House). She won the Connecticut Poetry Society’s Eco-Poetry Award and the Poetry of the Sacred Award from the Center for Interfaith Relations.