Tuesday Poem: well-executed

 This week's Tuesday Poem is one of nine in a series about death row executions in Texas. It is published in the first collection by Sarah Jane Barnett called A Man Runs Into a Woman (Hue & Cry 2012) and is called 'When the Sister Walks'. 

Sarah is quoted as saying,

' I wrote the poems as a way to try and understand  how something like a murder, and then the subsequent execution of the convicted person, could become a normalised event for the people involved – the police, prison wardens, execution technicians, clergy, the inmates and their family, and the family of the victims. Maybe it can’t. I hope the poems try to reconcile, or at least interpret, the different stories told by the inmate’s last words and the police crime report. Maybe my poems are another story about the event.' 

Once you've read Sarah's poem, check out the Tuesday Poem sidebar which links to 30 poets in NZ, Australia, UK, the US and Italy. There are such delights there today including 'Wild Woman Cow' by Helen McKinlay and 'The Tragedy of Laundry' by James Valvis and Sugu Pillay's 'Abandoned Geography' ... as well as part one of the epic novel in verse 'Kamal' by Zireaux. Why not spend a minute or two absorbing poetry - what harm can come of it?