Introducing...POEM OF THE WEEK! "Snip Snip Snip" by John J. Trause

Introducing our Poem of the Week feature! (Suggestions for a better title are welcome). Every Friday a poem from our submission pile will be posted on the blog (and also to our Facebook page). Rejoice, comment, confer, savor! No need to go looking for poetry—on the wings of The Toucan, a freshly picked poem will find YOU, once a week, best enjoyed with a refreshing beverage of any sort. We’d like to say right now don’t bother submitting exclusively for this feature—the beauty of it is that we will find it and lift it out of the obscurity that occasionally becomes our submissions inbox.



Our first selection is from an old pal of ours whose work has graced these pages before. John J. Trause consistently writes intellectual, engaging, and witty poems that it is our distinct pleasure to carry. Behold his poem, “Snip Snip Snip”

Snip Snip Snip

(A Day In Messidor)

“What wonder, then, fair nymph, thy hairs should feel

The conqu’ring force of unresisted steel?”

                                                            The Rape of the Lock

1

                      On long summer days—

                      What days?

                      Hot days,

                      I’m all too conscious of my long hair—

                     What hair?

                     The hair on my head—

                     What hair?

                     My thick long hair,

                     My untouched hair.

                     What sort of woman was Fenelon?

2

                    Yes, my hair needs a cutting—it’s long once again,

                    Surrendering,

                    Bending my head

                    In that mechanical chair,

                   That cold, mechanical chair,
                   I thought of Fenelon, that spry figure among the
                   barracks,

                   Amid the clippings (ready to be harvested),

                  With “Allons, enfants de la patrie” etched in her heart

                  (Though scratched in her larynx)—

                   And branded in her eyes:

              ARBEIT MACHT FREI

                  And of Albert Anastasia spilled on the floor

                  Amid the clippings.

                  I too am there

                 Among the steel, among the hair, among….

plόκαμοι

AND LOOK FOR NEW WORK NEXT FRIDAY!