Poetry: Barry Spacks
Black Fire
There’s this girl who pulled out her hair,
she kept doing it till the age of ten,
no one could figure out the reason,
including her. She favored one side,
so for the sake of symmetry her Ma
would shave the other, but mostly she went bald
and the kids naturally thought her, um, weird,
but now she’s Princess Purr-fict,
her coiffeur intact. She smiles when she mentions
her days of mystery-misery.
Come look into her shining face
and you won’t catch even a glimpse
of the lava roil that once within
exacted pain after twitchy pain,
that vast dark now-sleeping volcano
which once burned through her like black fire.