Beard Island, Population: 1
Charlotte Seley
When I woke, your beard said:
This is not a beard
—all mystery unfurled.
Your beard is the fortress surrounding your mouth, the abyss
I must not fall into (if I fall in I’ll be doomed),
an electric blanket with a skeleton of rusty wires,
a small flitter of spangles
dusting the sidewalks in a snowglobe.
I tease out the tangled thicket
with canine dentures and damaged sea shells.
It’s only as coarse as snow is massive
collected on the ground in quantity.
Your beard’s a cocoon for lucid dreams,
where the television Yule log feels hot
to the touch and hazy.
The gate of tiny fishhooks where all the hairs curve
up, parachutes hanging off blimps and clouds.
Your beard’s curlicues are springboards in the mattress
left on the curb, tagged in marker and graffiti—
flotsam of a college town’s moving day.
An island of abundance, miles of scratchy Astroturf,
a thousand florets I crawl into sometimes,
lay thin against a follicle,
hide from uproarious bears.
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