The Morning They Shot Anavere
Was a morning like any other
dreams were not any thicker
the sun didn’t shine or
unshine, it was the same sun
we always knew,
the same sun
Blinding the day a yellow disc a sting in the sky
the night was the same
black night as any other
black night to sleep through & wake up from
with bloodshot eyes the same
as the bloodshot eyes of every other morning
With the same hours stuck inside clocks
the same minutes ticking away inside watches
stuck to our wrists biting into the seconds
of a day the same as any other day
with its clean morning the same as any other morning
with the same sky the same streets the same walls all the same
The morning the full weight
of her body fell to the ground at the exact same speed
as any other body of the hundreds of thousands of bodies piled high
in ditches and alleys and prison cells across every Great Nation
piled high in ghettos and camps and trailer parks
spilling the same slow blood
As warm as any other blood as salty & sticky
spilling from her pierced liver into her rubber mouth,
a hole for breathing while she stared at the blasting sky
with its glint of metal gold splinters sparkling river
a flood of light on a morning
the same as any other morning
The morning they shot Anavere
Sofia Varino is a writer and performer. Her work has appeared in Poetry International, bad poetry quarterly, and the anthology Come Hear, among others. Her poetry pamphlet Natural Language was published by Dancing Girl Press (Chicago, USA) in 2017. She holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature and cultural studies and lectures at Humboldt University in Berlin.