This is the last article you can read this month
You can read more article this month
You can read more articles this month
Sorry your limit is up for this month
Reset on:
Please help support the Morning Star by subscribing here
Something wired about her face
makes me stop scrolling down. I’m sucked
into those eyes, the dark shine of her skin;
the expression I can’t quite place.
She seems unsettled in her blue gown,
and the cap clamping her head. It’s the end
of lockdown and hairdressers have been busy
since midnight. I wonder what treatment this is.
The image is electric, bursting out of itself.
Chubby white fingers, just in shot, apply a kind
of gel to her temple. The chair, socially distanced,
is too solid, somehow excessive.
Then I notice her wrists, her ankles, the straps.
She’s snatching at final moments.
African-American prisoners are disproportionately represented on death row. The US Supreme Court does not acknowledge statistical bias as a reason to overturn an individual’s sentence. Claire Booker lives in Brighton. Her pamphlet The Bone That Sang is due out from Indigo Dreams. 21st-century Poetry is edited by Andy Croft, email [email protected]
