Murderous Mary
killed a man. Blood must have blood.
The guilty must hang.
Hung from a one-hundred-ton
Clinchfield railroad crane car. Dies.
lopsided, bodies dripped dry of lifewater. They call these “gruesome deaths,” try to keep
livestock in the barn, as if wooden panels and rusty nails can protect soft flesh from something
vaguely feline and very hungry. People see what they cannot explain and are limited to words
already learned: big cat, panther, bobtail, cougar, lion—in North Carolina?—
Explain this to me:Since when do big cats quench thirstWith blood from the kill?
Sam Campbell is a writer and teacher from Tennessee. She earned her English M.A. from East Tennessee State University, where she was editor-in-chief of The Mockingbird. She currently serves Arkansas International as managing editor, and she is the fiction editor and co-founder of Black Moon Magazine. She publishes across all genres; her work appears or is forthcoming in October Hill, MORIA, Poetry South, and Eunoia, among others. Her awards include the 2022 Jesse Stuart Prize for Young Adult Writing, the 2022 James E. & Ellen Wadley Roper Fellowship for Excellence in Creative Writing, and the 2021 James Still Prize.