Perie Longo
Author Photo: Stacy Byers.
(USA)
BEAUTIFUL HAIR
Before his parting this earth, I saw
hundreds of spiders in the shower risen
from the drain. I put on my glasses
to my own suffer of hair, ran fingers
through diminishing strands, more
in my hands. “Honey, look!” I rushed
into the bedroom where he lay bald
in his chemo state, breathing shallow.
“For me?” he smiled, hazy-eyed,
turning my cruel vanity around
with a kick. We rested awhile, wet
with what was left of each other.
When the bottom dropped out, I drove
to the vitamin store, asked the clerk
for solution to my dandelion head gone
to seed, nothing but a bird’s nest,
I wept. She lifted from the shelf
a purple bottle of pills labeled,
“Beautiful Hair,” as if the color
would redeem my royal callousness,
the capsules replace my light-
headedness or the touch of his hand
through my once crowning glory
which grew thick again mattering less
and less as months dragged on.
One night I dreamed my head full of feathers,
a great bird struggling to break free.
Previously published in Baggage Claim. Cincinnati, OH: WordTech Editions. © 2014.
Something Small
Let me write something small
to fit into this large life
or something large
to fit into my small life
or something bold to help me
find strength
like my husband’s last breath
or yesterday’s red sunset behind
the black peaks
or was it the black peaks
leaning against that vast red wall
Self inside self, are you dying
like the sun or more alive than ever
waiting for the light?
Previously published in With Nothing behind but Sky: a journey through grief. Santa Barbara, CA: Artamo Press, 2006.
Cliffs of Moher, County Clare
Flight has dropped you right where the Ireland calendar
on your kitchen wall left you thousands of miles ago,
and since Dublin, days more of a good dose of twists
and turns. Walking the precipitous edge of the cliffs,
the day full sun, in the distance row upon row
of birds roost in eon-chewed niches. You peer down
to better hear the swish-swash below after the sea’s crash
against the walls still forging the ridge. At the drop,
stomach churns like the spume inside the blue whorl.
You back off at the sign posting Danger, lives lost
slipping over. A woman in a wheelchair
poised too close, gazes out, a man holding her firm.
Perhaps this view a last wish. Suddenly flashes of white
like flung arrows distract, fulmars and kittiwakes
playing like children, gliding the spray.
They whiz toward the dark cliff rise,
then tour j’eté back to sea in a kind of tease—
coming home, just kidding— like exultations
of souls unbound from flesh. What else can you do
but run toward the tower at the very tip
and lift, all wing and weave.
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Perie Longo, Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara, California (2007-2009), has published four books of poetry, the latest titled Baggage Claim (2014). Other titles are Milking the Earth, The Privacy of Wind, and With Nothing behind but Sky: a journey through grief. Her work has appeared in Askew, Atlanta Review, Bosque, Connecticut Review, International Poetry Review, Miramar Magazine, Nimrod, Paterson Literary Review, Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner, Rattle, South Carolina Review and other journals, anthologies and texts. She teaches poetry privately and for the Santa Barbara Writers Conference. As a psychotherapist, she integrates poetry for healing and is poetry chair of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.