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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, Hermès 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.

by Noel Whittall

Noel Whittall lives in Yorkshire.  "The dictator and his wife" is published in Curriculum, 4 Leeds Poets 1998, White Line Press.  Available from 1A Headingley Mount, Leeds LS6 3EL

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Last modified: September 26, 2006