D.G. Geis
I hear America screaming
Death haunts the barbershops.
The beards that never grew,
the clippings feathered on the floor:
oh dear oh dear what will we do with the rest of you?
The barbicide so blue, unearthly light
suffused in chrome topped jars; still buzzing,
the radioactive combs laid out,
fluorescent corpses, refugees of Roswell or even worse
(those all too documented aliens!).
“Herr Doktor, “what specimen have we here?”
Comic book amputations
harvested from comic book imputations.
Why this hair will fill pillows and stuffed toys
for all the good little girls and boys.
But oh dear oh dear what will we do with the rest of you?
“The sinister cut is very different
from a crew cut.” the barber is explaining.
“You can do magic with a straight razor.
We once let blood, you know!”
The electric clippers buzz with sinister inference.
Deduction is the barber’s art and
Occam was a barber too.
“Look”, he says with pride,
“these clippers were made in America.
They will not deracinate
but stroke the neck tutorially.
What they have to teach is patience.
But you must not come on Monday.
That is the barber’s day of rest.”
And all the old men filling chairs, marking time,
leafing through old magazines, page by page,
a blur of desuetude and wrinkled lines,
old men who never once get asked:
“Sir, did you have an appointment?”
Wise ones who know there is nothing now worth scheduling;
and whose missing parts, sundered in such strange light
find new brooms which in the end
sweep everything away.
D.G. Geis is the author of Fire Sale (Tupelo Press/Leapfolio) and Mockumentary (Main Street Rag). Most recently, his poetry has appeared in The Irish Times, Fjords, Skylight 47 (Ireland), A New Ulster Review (Ireland), Crannog Magazine (Ireland), The Moth (Ireland), Into the Void (Ireland), The Naugatuck River Review, The Tishman Review, Zoomorphic (U.K.), The Kentucky Review, Ink and Letters, The Journal of Creative Geography, Solstice, The Worcester Review, Broad River Review, Press 53, Passager, and Under the Radar (Nine Arches Press UK). He was shortlisted for both the 2017 Ballymaloe International Poetry Prize (Ireland) and the 2017 Percy French Prize (Strokestown International Poetry Prize, Ireland) .He was also a finalist for The New Alchemy (University of Alaska) and Fish Prizes (Ireland); and a finalist for the 2016 Main Street Rag Chapbook Competition, the 2016 Edna St. Vincent Millay Prize, the 2016 Louis Award, the 2016 Rash Award, and the 2017 Prime Number Magazine Award for Poetry. He divides his time (unequally) between Houston, Galveston, and Dublin.
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