I’m afraid the guy who cuts
My hair someday will snap, talk
Baseball, slide the razor down my face, pull
My locks as we discuss the demise of the LA Times
And use the scissors on my eyes
Because he swears he sees a dotted line.

Last week I stood in line
At the deli, watched the butcher cut
Salami and sausage, his eyes
Focused on the meat while he talked
To the guy in front of me. “Sign of the times,”
The butcher said, as he went to pull

The pork, concealed hands as he pulled
His pistol on the guy ‘cause he couldn’t stand the line.
For me, delis aren’t for meat now, Good Times
Is on TV and I’m scared as channel 37 cuts
Out—technical difficulties. I think of my talk
With the blind woman, who says her eyes

Hurt when she hears of my pain. Her eyes
Blankly blink and she pleads for me to pull
Her eyelids up past her forehead while she talks
Of what it’s like in her darkness. I rub the lines
On her cheeks and feel the curved cuts
Carved by broken glass the time

A bottle was broken on her face. “Sometimes…”
She doesn’t finish as I grab her body—my eyes,
Open, strip off her clothes and my hands cut
Through her crevices; from here she pulls
Me into her darkness and we recite some lines
From John Keats’ “When I Have Fears” then talk

About delis and barbers and she talks
About her fear of bats and the times
She heard them scream while she dreamed, lying
In bed while they heard her with their eyes
And I think of the bats as her mirrors—pulled
To her because they too live in darkness, cut

Off—She cuts my hair, straight lines. I pull
Away at times, afraid to talk. She lays down
The clippers and leans in to kiss my eyes.