In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Clippings
  • Andrea O'Brien (bio)

I. Some Monday Nights

My mother gathered cutting shears      and the razor stashed among aftershave,            shoe polish, pennies, and buttons                  set loose from their collared shirts.

She was the Mississippi guiding        my father to his chair at the kitchen table            where her fingers moved like rivulets                  through his thinning hair. She cut evenly

around the base of his thickly lined neck.        When finished, she stripped the towel            clipped around his shoulders.                  Her hands brushed away hair that clung

like ashes on the first of Lent. His evening ended          with the Milwaukee Journal, this act burning as he touched                the top of his head, the nape of his neck.                      And she set to work, sweeping it all up.

II. The Morning of My Sister's Wedding

We attended the beauty salon the way    one attends church, mindful in the cathedral          of shampoo and permanents. My mother,                  under a dryer with her hair wrapped [End Page 505]

to the scalp in rollers, described the details:        bouquets, hoop dresses, matchbooks inscribed              with the date. My sister and I, then nineteen and four,                    sat in raised chairs side by side, staring

into each other's reflections, not knowing          exactly how Milwaukee would look different                that night. The women behind us wore frosted blue                      eyeshadow and called me "hon."

They twisted and tied our hair high above our heads.        This was how we were braided with ribbons,              how we were knotted together, how the past                    was shorn and stolen away in our pockets.

III. Losses

Chemotherapy must have been simple, relative      to the surgery that left my mother bald along              one half of her head. Doctors with their good                    intentions and scalpels had split her skull

to operate on cancer's far-reaching effects. There was no way        to save the remaining hair brushed away from the scar.                During the last months, a turban that matched                  housecoat and eyes framed her jaundiced face.

She was the naked tree of Ordinary Time stripped        to its bark. Some days, when visitors called                like migratory birds, she wore a hairpiece                        fashioned in her familiar style.

But she was never at peace in a wig woven        from the hair of strangers. How can we be modest              when all we are buried with is our thin shell                    and the color of yesterday?

IV. Years Later My Father Phoned

We would visit my mother's grave.      He made a note of it and one to call [End Page 506]             the barber. I was forced to create                    my own memory of him, raised

in a swiveling chair with his arms resting          on a tidal stomach. The radio was tuned                to a station that favored Nat, Bing, and Frank                        while a mute TV scrolled scores

from a golf tournament. He chose not to notice        the hair that fell to his shoulders like petals                nor the way his life had been trimmed                neatly of years with his wife.

He looked the same when I next saw him.        A little more gray near his ears, I thought,                as he placed a Pick 'n Save bouquet                        that would yield to the wind.

V. Hands Trembling Like Music

I raised the electric razor to the hair        around your ears, your neck, the impossibly              small folds of skin. You were warm                      and red from our shower.

I worried about cutting too much,        about nicking the skin like a novice.              Moving with the energy of waves,                  forward and back, in imperfect circles,

I strained to cut even lines. Suddenly          I was in my mother's body, knowing the curves              and edges of love. It is being blind-                    folded and spun along the narrow

trails of canyons. Your cut hair clung          to our bodies: little fibers fixed on me,                  on you, on this inevitable passing between                        the cells of memory and the moment. [End Page 507]

Andrea O'Brien

Andrea O'Brien's poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in the Nimrod International Journal, Connecticut Review, and The New York Quarterly. She lives in central Kentucky.

...

pdf

Share