Abandoned

By Janet Jennerjohn

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My son, a new cop in a middle-sized city
in the Midwest, sends me a text, a video
of him mirandizing a little lost puppy. The 
video is filmed in the middle of his mid-
night shift, it’s grainy and night-vision red.
The juvey pitbull mix pads toward my son’s
voice: “You have the right to remain silent.”
He does, the screen turns to black as his
tiny nose approaches me. I imagine it is wet
and cold. He is only a baby, abandoned in a
waste water tunnel, or left among the un-
homed beneath a train trestle, or alone and 
shivering, his shadow large amid the mosaic 
of puddles populating an underpass. My son’s
voice is kind, and reflective, a little playful. He
knows that puppy better than any of us. When
he was found, in Barrio Kennedy, a poor neighbor-
hood in a large South American city, I hope 
that Colombian cop whispered to him in a kind voice:
Buenas noches, Muchachito.  
Ven aca, mijito;
Ven aca. 

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Janet Jennerjohn is a recently retired college English instructor who now enjoys working with the children at her neighborhood Milwaukee public elementary school. She is the author of a bilingual chapbook, Cara dividida/Divided Face, and has had writing published in Sheltering with Poems, New Growth Arts Review, and Studies in the Humanities, among others.

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