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This writing was accepted for publication in the 84 page perfect-bound issue... Down in the Dirt magazine (v097) (the August 2011 Issue) You can also order this 5.5" x 8.5" issue as an ISSN# paperback book:						This writing also appears in this 6" x 9" ISBN# paperback “Catch Fire in the Treetops” Order this 6" x 9" ISBN# book:

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It Could Happen to You

Roger Cowin

A man enters a crowded bar,
pulls out a .38 caliber revolver
and fires a single shot into the back
of his rivals head, says “that’s one
cheating bastard who’ll never steal
another man’s woman again.”

          This really happened.

I was there, walking by,
a beer in each hand when his head
exploded, spraying the bar with blood, brains
and fragments of chipped bones.

A young woman goes for a walk in the
Georgia woods near her home accompanied
by her dog.
She’s only twenty-four years old
and everyone knows they’re
invincible when they’re twenty-four.
Days later her decapitated body is found in the woods,
murdered by a passing drifter.
          This actually happened.
I read about it in the paper,
saw it on the news.

An apparently happily
married woman takes a shotgun and blasts
a hole in her sleeping husband, gathers the children
and drives halfway across country
before the police catch up to her.
In her confession she describes a life
of physical and emotional abuse,
raped night after night by her Baptist minister husband.
          And yes, this really happened.

A Muslim man from Pakistan
living in Arizona fears his daughter
has become too westernized.
He runs her over
in his American made Ford F150.
Fleeing to Mexico, he hops a plane to the U.K. where
he is met by the police and immediately deported back
to the states.
He is sentenced to less time
than some drug dealers.
          
It was on the T.V. news.

A young woman falls asleep in the backseat of a car.
The driver dozes off, just for a moment,
the tires catch on some loose gravel, sending the car
flipping end over end into a ditch.
The driver, who was wearing her seatbelt, is unhurt.
The girl in the backseat was not.
She is thrown
from the wreckage like a rag doll, a marionette
operated by some mad, cosmic puppeteer.
          This really happened.

In a single, careless instant she was
suddenly gone, her body broken
and shattered beyond all recognition.

I stared at the closed casket, wept as they placed her
in the ground and covered her forever.
It was only then I knew
    it could happen to you,
to me.
In fact, its already happened.
We are all
already dead and don’t even know it.

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