BIG HEAD
They carried the big head
through the streets, detached
from its neck and its body
but spilling all its evil
everywhere they carried it,
puddles for the people
to splash their happy feet, its jaw
flopping open as they adjusted
the angle of the big head
and its weight, the tongue
lolling out (what tongues do)
and then retracting between
teeth stained brown by too much
smoking or lack of scrubbing
with Ajax like the bottom
of the toilet bowl, people
growing tired of putting up
with the big head one more
second, and falling away
and new people joining
the people working so hard
to keep the big head up above
their own heads, to keep it
where other people could see
what a truly big head it was
and how it was no longer
attached to heart and lungs
and any of the many cruelties
that lived inside what it was.
—from Poets Respond
__________
Stuart Watson: “This poem was inspired by the image of joyous citizens of Damascus carrying the severed sculptural head of what I assume was once part of a statue of Bashar al-Assad. Nothing in all the coverage captured for me the essence of the story.”
