A hair cut.
After buzzing a good portion
of my hair, I asked Jessi to continue
on the portions I could not see.
I felt around with my hand.
“You missed a spot.”
After removing the guard
from the clippers,
“ I can only explain this,
and not show you by example”
“Take these clippers and round
it off or make it straight
then shave off the hair
down the neck.”
“You’re good with a pencil,
you should have no problem”
“Pencils have erasures and this does not.”
“I don’t care, you have to look
at it not me.”
Henry used to cut my hair.
I would pay him twenty dollars
He did this whether
I paid him or not.
He needed the money
more than I did at the time.
In exchange, the best hair cut,
including a quasi pompadour,
but my hairline is receding now.
This insatiable artist
taught me more about life
than 10 years of books
subsequently read.
Wiping my face,
because it hard not to,
when you speak of Henry,
because this is loss.
His zeal for life
may have
resided in the fact
he knew his time was limited.
Once my local barber,
a Russian man would
always greet you with smiles
and a few jokes, in a thick accent
then cut your hair in ten minutes flat
with only scissors, shave the back
of your neck with a straight razor.
In my vain days I paid
fifty dollars for a hair cut
in a upscale salon
while drinking a glass of wine,they didn’t match.
He had to close shop
others did not understand the value.
Chris Carrawiano enjoys absinthe and poetry, quite often he louches his glass with his own tears, but never with a sugar cube or fire because that would be wrong. He has aspirations to make his own brand in Richmond, VA where he lives, because he cries that much.
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