Michelle Bitting
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Boys Like You
Boys like you like to ride on trains
the steady hum of wheels
the rails’ endless strum
make splintered neurons in your
brain line up singing
It’s repetition in your eye
the sweet iteration of color
and shape, the trees whizzing by
in cedar clumps, dry grass lots
of parsnips gone to seed, black
crows making cursive in the paper sky
flirting or hunting field mice
at this speed it’s hard to tell
our cokes and hot dogs jostling
and still your gaze stays glued
to the bridges, ducts, ravines,
the concrete overpass
spray painted like fireworks
on backs of houses, porches
hemorrhaging milk crates, old fridges,
propane tanks and laundry lines
rippling faded floral sheets
a dog on a chain straining
at birds as we dash along
not saying a word, as the world
a mute holy blur rushes past us
and you pray to the window
His Hat
Anyone can wear a porkpie,
don a jaunty straw boater
or felt fedora,
crook the hound’s tooth lip
of a mini Stetson
over a martini-flogged eye
and blot the day’s sun,
its blistering news.
But if you are Johnny Depp,
your hat is more
than a statement of style,
more than a rakish blend
of old and pop-world panache,
more than a plaid bucket,
a hobo pan inverted,
a drapery cage to quiet
the inner flutter
of your imaginary world. It is
the devil’s haberdashery,
the kind reserved for
a breed of noble idiot,
of holy jester,
with enough ink in his royal aura
to grease the stations of the cross.
You are the perfect
modern imposter: barber, sailor,
mob man, chocolate maker,
and your timeless face
of stopped clock beauty,
the milk bone stalk
of your neck, the broken worm
moustache and fuzzy goatee,
horn-rimmed glasses
that frame your Buster Keaton
peeps, your silly swagger
and beggar’s humility,
sweeten the sting of everyday living.
Johnny, if you can hear this,
know I’ve got your button
pinned to my heart
and I’ll do what it takes—
brave the high salty seas,
ride the wing of your private jet
as it caroms between Paris
and the Bahamas—I’m here
to hold you up, whatever finery
you may be sporting, honey,
I’ve got an excellent rack.
Oh My Nappy Hair
(Salon De Beaute, Los Angeles, CA.)
At dawn we’d meet, wobbly-legged,
slurping coffee from paper cups,
our eyes gluey
from cooking late at her restaurant,
rumble off in the flatbed
to the open air aisles
in search of sun chokes, fava,
the long crooked fingers
of Yukon Gold. And each week
we’d pass it: hair salon with
the bossest name, corner of 8th
and La Brea, where Nancy sang
the words out: oh my nappy hair!
ashed her butt in the eye
of a cracked windowpane,
vowing someday to seek advice
for her own unruly mane.
I can’t tell you, years later,
if she did; I’ve lost touch.
But I’m reminded of the place
when a friend’s nephew
spends half the night there
getting his crazy nest
torqued and trained
into a helmet of orderly dreads.
Bunto Knots, Box Braids,
Dreadlocks, Cornrolls, Straw Sets
and even a Sengalese Twist
is what they offer, so sayeth
the website, defining nappy
to mean when the comb stops.
They are game to take it on:
coarse hair, natural hair, black
hair, pressed hair, curly hair
kinky hair, locked hair, colored
hair, hair cuts, straight hair,
relaxed hair, we do everybody
and all hair types and will not
discriminate when it comes
to the many great hair
textures God has created.
Legend has it people who farmed
connected hair with the earth,
which brings me back to Nancy
sorting through bins of tubers,
the scraggly beards of celery root,
tangled coifs of green garlic,
so pungent and beguiling
you wanted to bite it uncooked.
Years pass and those hot days
laboring in kitchens
seem frivolous, easy now.
One friend has lost her hair
to the ravages of chemo,
another and myself
await our own toxic tonsuring,
the names of wigmakers
and herbalists piled up by the phone.
Nisus, King of Megara, remained
invincible as long as his magic
locks were intact,
and Samson bit the dust
when Delilah wielded
her gleaming sheers. Some shave
their heads in mourning,
some undo woven plaits
and let fall the silk curtain
around two soft, afflicted breasts.
There are 100,000 follicles
on the human scalp at birth,
and though the shafts will come
and go—bright threads combed awry
by the swift sweep of Fortune’s hand,
the roots, like love,
cannot be shaken
or destroyed until death
and even then will strain to stretch
towards light for the briefest time.
Bio
Michelle Bitting has work published or forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Nimrod, Narrative, River Styx, Crab Orchard Review, Passages North, Poemeleon, Many Mountains Moving, Rattle, Linebreak, and others. Recently, her work was seen in diode, The Cortland Review, and Sou’wester. Poems have appeared on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily. In 2007, Thomas Lux chose her full-length manuscript, Good Friday Kiss, as the winner of the DeNovo First Book Award and C & R Press published it in 2008. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Pacific University, Oregon. Visit her at: www.michellebitting.com