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Haircuts

after “Beneath the Layers” (below) ~ Kurt Reynolds

Lined up, wiped clean, eldest to the baby,
sons are screwed to a gilded frame.
Ferrules are paint-caked, brushing scenes

of horror on shot-pocked alley walls.
Abstract, outlines of girl’s breasts—
no girls left, but brothers are bristle

brushes with a taste for mannequin.
Fiberglass flesh in shattered shops.
Survival hangs on nicknames, Bristle,

Badger, Hog … The runt, Ox-Ear,
above his beavertail handle, fits perfectly
in Dad’s slap. So many tufts and cowlicks,

family resemblances, series of split endings.
Haircuts. The prickly eldest stands
dark-haired and straight, certain in the inches

of his brush, sharp edged in the corner.
The next kid in line smooths curly ducktails,
swipes his forelock into doo,

swats Junior, the middle-born, across the head.
That child, so blonde, so tapered—
a boy who couldn’t spring from Father’s seed.

 

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“Beneath the Layers” is reproduced with the written permission of the artist. See more of Kurt Reynolds’ work here.

Robert Carr is a Maine-based author of five collections of poetry, most recently, Blue Memento (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2025) and Phallus Sprouting Leaves, winner of the 2024 Rane Arroyo Chapbook Series (Seven Kitchens Press). Robert’s work has appeared in many journals and magazines including The Greensboro Review, Seneca Review, Shenandoah and swamp pink.