Salome with the Head of St. John the Baptist I, Michelangelo Merisi -- known in my time and yours as Caravaggio painted this scummy episode: a pouty nymphet who made stepdad Herod come in his pants, now refusing to look at the head-on-a-platter, and besides it was all my stupid mother’s fault. You might think instead this was -- as you people say -- about ‘speaking truth to power’, and look where it gets you. No, for me, the really compelling character is the executioner: jug-eared, busted nose, the sort of thug you’d hire off the docks to do some dirty work and do it right. A kind of in-your-face self-portrait. Norbert Hirschhorn Norbert Hirschhorn is a public health physician, commended by President Bill Clinton as an “American Health Hero.” He lives in London and formerly in Lebanon. He has published four collections: A Cracked River (Slow Dancer Press, London, 1999), Mourning in the Presence of a Corpse (Dar al-Jadeed, Beirut, 2008), Monastery of the Moon (Dar al-Jadeed, Beirut, 2012), and To Sing Away the Darkest Days, Poems Re-imagined from Yiddish Folksongs (Holland Park Press, London, 2013). His poems have appeared in numerous US/UK publications, several as prize-winning. See his website,www.bertzpoet.com.
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July 2025
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