Nocturne with Shaved Head
Now it’s like great bolts of silk are being unfurled in the sky.
Occasional handfuls of pins tossed at the glass. Brocade
of the dark, kimono cloth, hypnagogic waves. The rise and fall
of my husband’s chest, his head shorn today by the barber so it reveals
his scalp, what the finest bristle permits. They say the head weighs
about eleven pounds, the size of the baby he was at birth.
His mother never failed to note he could have killed her, but she survived
and had another even bigger one. I learned tonight you shouldn’t
dig a grave on a Monday unless you want to dig another one
within the year. Also, when a slit in the throat reveals the carotid artery,
it looks like calamari. This in a documentary intended to help us
understand death. A man agreed in advance to let us see
how chemicals restore the blush to his face. That’s him, the undertaker said,
fixing the glasses over his nose. Sometimes while my husband sleeps
I can almost make myself feel the baby he was, being lifted
to a hip, his brow pressed against the soft of my throat.