Firing Squad

On balconies, sunlight. On poplars, sunlight on our lips.

Today no one is shooting.

A girl cuts her hair with imaginary scissors—

the scissors in sunlight, her hair in sunlight.

Another girl steals a pair of shoes from a sleeping soldier, skewered with light.

As soldier wakes and looks at us looking at them

what do they see?

Tonight they shot fifty women at Lerna St.,

I sit down to write and tell you what I know:

a child learns the world by putting it in her mouth,

a girl becomes a woman and a woman, earth.

Body, they blame you for all things and they

seek in the body what does not live in the body.

Credit

Copyright © 2018 by Ilya Kaminsky. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on January 26, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.

About this Poem
“This piece is from a recently completed manuscript, Deaf Republic. In the book, a boy is killed by soldiers breaking up a protest, the gunshot becomes the last thing the citizens hear—all have gone deaf, and their dissent is coordinated by sign language. ‘Firing Squad’ is dedicated to Garth Greenwell.”
—Ilya Kaminsky