Noel Whittall
The Dictator and his Wife
Shot dictators are quite small.
The bullets take more than life.
A dictator’s wife holds a lot of blood.
I saw it on TV, leaking from her neck.
Could have been a scarf;
silk, Hermes perhaps.
I watched a man in another land
take a live fish from water. Then
a sharp knife. He sectioned its body,
slicing through gleaming skin,
severing the muscle and nerve
and backbone that had driven it
through its strange dimension.
Maybe fish don’t suffer;
they bleed less freely than dictators
or their wives.
Page(s) 47
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