Shaved Head

Forget contingencies from weather and wind,

my Helen’s head was shaved, the shortest bit

of stubble growing in. With darkened arching

black eye-brows, Betty-Blue mouth penciled red,

jet patent-leather trench and high-heeled boots,

she seemed more mannequin for Fashion Ave.’s

penitent spread than enemy to brass

at Camp LeJeune. Simply and grudgingly put,

her talk was action. Invincible in Bell-

Atlantic block and tack, she converted non-coms

and saved CO’s, harped flint and skinned the chair

of military courts through well-pitched cheek,

prompt dispatch from the War Resister’s League.

She looked good even on a bicycle, hemming left

through traffic on Fourteenth Street, locking up

on Lafayette or Grand. She doused for me

to celebrate—marched right through human waste

and Bowery puddles, stretched her legs over the last

old-fashioned hobos up to East Second Street.

Those ancient days, our vestibule was manned

by crack-dealing Stan, a concierge of wit

and improv, half his face scored by orange scars

from hydrofluoric burns. He kept the place safe.

But I had gone, cleared out behind a gang

of kids from Bronxville high on catnip wins,

shell-game victims. Left Stan my toaster, shelves,

a wire bird-cage, and, for once, nothing to say.

Except to ask if he could touch her skull.

Even now it makes no sense. Her precedents

I knew lurched out of focus: photos from France

after the Vichy fell, Jeannes and Sylvianes

who’d made Nazi moll; those Belfast girls

last-ditched by soldier boys or peelers; two-

toned Bergen-Belsen, bald sister to Fort Santiago.

Then Squeaky Fromm, the other Manson moms,

at Charlie’s trial. Extremes of Joan of Arc,

or even Buddhist nuns. Hated, chastened—

or chaste, at least. Not what you’d run (I ran)

your fingers satisfied across, the stubble

surprising, soft as mink or fox, and arch

your back, as I did once she found me uptown,

say yes I give again when she went down—

and faster now, quick as the television

dropped after dishes to the curb—or slipped

gradually up, the seconds separating

as slowly as but more exquisitely than

ticks off expensive fifty-minute hours—

and some community service—all gone, and just

as easily forgotten the raft of former friends

I’d cursed and floated off the island. Shaved head,

her slender neck, dark shoulders—that was half—

or less—her most convincing argument.

Source: Bridge and Tunnel (WordTech Communications, 2007)

Poems From My Ex

Shaved Head