Poet of the Week: Gary Allen Jackson
Goliath
We prop the body up
but it blocks the sky.
If we lay it down, we’d have
to uproot too many trees,
and we cannot leave him
in the sun, in the dark. There is a hole
through his chest – the light
finds a way to bend
through him. We could bury
the body, but who can afford
to buy enough plots,
and how many plots will it take?
Eighty? Two hundred?
Who will dig the graves? Who
will call the men & machines
to chew enough earth?
Enough with the body, please
give him a name.
– Goliath.
But we already have
a Goliath: the one who steps
over buildings, cups men
& women in the prison
of his palms.
Choose another.
– Black Goliath?
Yes. Ok. We
could disassemble Black
Goliath, cut him to pieces,
blow him to atoms.
We could use rope
or chains to drag him
to the river, or wrench
him apart with steel.
Rope would not hold him.
He would leave grooves too deep
to drag. And no one wants
a body raining from the sky.
Then we leave him
to lie in the sun.
There will still be bones.
But bones we can use.
Bones we can unearth
and polish years from now –
build a playground
for children, let them swing freely
from his ivory ribs.