Why Your Hair Is Falling Out

Maybe you should quit going out
before dawn in the ice and rose light.

And stop treating your hair
like an enemy animal, wrenching,

pulling. Do you need better tools?
A caliper? The shining geometry

of a new comb? You should crawl out
from under the table where you’ve

been lying among clawed table legs.
The claws hold balls that touch

the carpet like little worlds. And stop
watching surgery on your phone.

You can see what’s lifted by shining
forceps and dropped to a metal bowl.

Your hand casts a shadow that
seems to bleed on the carpeted floor.

Should you go outside to check on
certain collapsing clouds? Every

roadkill rebukes you—entrails
dangling, bones split to red marrow.

Love is a carpenter. Ask it to start
mending, fixing, tapping in nails.

The Lopsided Star

We’re in a restaurant like the hold
of a ship, the rigging moving,
the shrouds and stays.

A man reads the specials, patient
as a new priest. He touches
the hand of the woman beside him.

We hear distant plumbing, soft
creaking as boards shift and settle.
Some people never quite learn

to read. Does a wire in the brain
get misbraided, forming a lopsided
star? The woman can’t read

the menu, but she knows she wants
meatloaf. And now a litany
of choices, soup, potatoes, dessert.

Is she like my student who learned
to read in her forties and now
writes only to God? Her letters,

work receipts, poems. All go
to God. Fixtures in the restaurant’s
ceiling drop slats of light

on shoulders and faces. We’re
spot lit. We’re golden. I finish
my supper, savor my coffee,

and step out to the dark
where the O of the moon
shines like a dish of sweet cream.

Barbara Daniels’ most recent book, Talk to the Lioness, was published by Casa de
Cinco Hermanas Press. Her poetry has appeared in Main Street Rag, Free State Review,
Philadelphia Stories, and many other journals. She received four fellowships from the New
Jersey State Council on the Arts.