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  • Issue 18
  • Eye for an Eye

Published by Associate Editor on June 13, 2013. This item is listed in Issue 18, Poetry

Eye for an Eye


 

Sheldon Art Museum, Lincoln, Nebraska

The sculpture of a head on the stairs
creeps out the Martians. They can’t tell

its gender. One whispers, The slashes
at crown and throat suggest maleness.

The furrowed brow, the x-ed out eyes,
the lack of body makes them worry.

They ask, What crime is punishable by head-loss?
Where’s the axe? The hooded man in black?

They’re sure the body will reveal something—
wrists bound by rope or a tongue sliced out

to be set aside and buried elsewhere.
One knocks on the head. The art peals—

an empty hollow sound, a void of dead air.
Maybe, one Martian says, it was bad thoughts.