I refused to cut my hair until I was seven. My mother probably hated having to sit down every day until then to untangle the nests in my hair- and my relentless whining every time the brush pulled my head back a bit too far, but she misses it every time it’s short. I liked going to bed with my hair spread out along the pillow, the ritual of my aunt stroking my hair until I fell asleep whenever she visited.
Every weekend I’d go to my dad’s apartment building- on this particular day, my mother thought it was nice enough to walk there, so that’s what we did. The three-block walk wasn’t too taxing- the only complaint I had was how sweaty her hand had gotten while it was locked with mine.…
Michael Montlack’s poetry collection Daddy (NYQ Books, September 7, 2020, 88 pages) is a sweeping vista of allegories and witticisms, and a benevolent contemplation on being a son, a brother, a poet, and a gay man in America.
The book cover is Christopher Shields’ pencil drawing of a man’s muscular arm sporting a tattoo of a seahorse; arresting and intriguing, it’s a warning of the nuanced play on femininity and masculinity that is to come. Appropriately enough, the book opens with a poem, “How to Mother Like a Man,” that talks about a male seahorse giving birth to help the female exhausted from egg production. This sets the tone for the entire collection—a compassionate memoir that transcends defined gender roles and is a celebration of grace, forgiveness, acceptance, and family.…
the room in which they’ve put her hospice bed brims with whispered talk of Christ a cross adorned with gaudy plastic beads glitters above the fireplace her husbands reads the Bible and tugs my arm to say she loves this verse his eyes are red and bulge with cowboy gospel songs she doesn’t budge except to mutter water to scratch her eye
i know this is her last transfiguration i know the harp that is her collapsing mouth is tuned to keys the living cannot fathom her song is no longer mother but something else
in life she never asked me once to pray in death i blink and don’t know what to say
The ring, held between white satin lips in the black velvet box, was shoved deep into the left-side of his hiking pants pocket. He repeatedly reached inside to touch it, making sure it was still there, even when on level ground where it was unlikely to fall out. Mal did not have much feeling in his left hand because burns had eradicated his finger tips. People still stared at his leathery facial scars, now twelve years old, but they no longer stopped while staring.
Still, it was a wonder to him that a woman as attractive as Becca would date him. They had been exclusive for several months, from the time they met at the university in Indiana, where Mal had enrolled as an MFA student in Poetry and Becca worked as the English Department administrative assistant.…
The first time I remember seeing you was at Awana in the Bible church in Three Rivers. I was in fifth grade. You were born a couple month before me, but were in third grade because, as you later explained, you broke your leg in first grade and didn’t go to school for most of the year. The other year you got held back? I’m not sure what you said happened with that, whether you were just behind or a teacher didn’t like you. It wasn’t anything you took responsibility for.
But you loved the Christian metal I had you listen to. You loved horror movies and so did I. The next three years of my high school you were at my house nearly every weekend.…
Sometimes I think that there’s a secret order to which certain baristas belong – only the painfully hip ones, mind you – which gives them insider tips on foam steaming, coaching on the right attitude to pouring, and special workshops on moustache trimming. I like to imagine that they meet in an underground bunker somewhere, or perhaps a church basement. Membership is, of course, rarefied. Admission is by invitation only, and brothers-and-sisters-in-coffee are sworn to secrecy for life.
What do they discuss in their masonic jar meetings? The first order of business must surely be hair. Everyone is aware of that certain cadre of baristas who always don immaculately coiffed hair. I think of them as the deliberately-messy hair brigade. What was it they used to say in West Village and Lincoln Park coffee shops? …
