About the Dead: Poems

Barber

[38] B A r B e r Such sensitivity is startling from hands rough as a gargoyle’s face. They gently sweep past my ears while mine remain folded in my lap— corpselike and neat. A photograph: young barber with wife wrapped in postwar bliss, azure future stretched out like a whisper, and all i can think is that one day none of this will be memory? Chapped hands hovering like leaves in a breeze, not even so much as a rustle in the crawlspace. Flecks of hair fall, scissors scratch light, mottled linoleum an autumn grave waiting to be swept. how easy to imagine that photograph tucked away like a handkerchief in his burial garb. The one who hangs on the longest dies twice. ...