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Photo by Joan P. Johnson

Vaughan Chapman writes in Surrey BC, where she can frequently be found throwing a ball for her dog, especially during the summer months. Most recently, her work appears in Contemporary Verse 2, Quills Canadian Poetry Magazine, and emerge 2006. She is a graduate of The Writer's Studio at SFU and continues to meet with two of the fine writers she met there: Shana Myara and Sarah K. Turner.

 

She wrote this poem because the evening after her dog found a dead rabbit behind the house, a neighbour barricaded himself inside his home and by morning had killed himself despite the efforts of a swarm of armed police to talk him out of it. Either of these events would have haunted her; together something had to take form.

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