Women Shearing Men

The wind whistles a bawdy tune,
ears fill with spring’s rapture,
men gnaw on the bones of their jobs
and hide their sly hunger behind their long hair.
Clouds soft as marshmallows soaked with rain
sink in the vast wallows of the sky.

Women lugging big shears
roam the streets driving the men
before them. Soon the men find themselves
penned in on every side and the shearing begins.
The women squat and hold the men’s necks
between their knees, the men cry out
when the shears nick their ears and tender scalps.

All the while flocks of blackbirds swing
free above new leaves, dogs flash back
and forth through alleys, a squirrel
leaps to a tree in sudden frenzy,
a tricycle pushed by the wind falls
off a porch.

The women take a coffee break, heat
their coffee with a blowtorch from a
plumber’s van, beef it up with a dollop
of bourbon, run fingers through the
men’s hair, jostle them to the ground,
while the men huddle in small groups,
hands over their crotches.

The men with naked heads stray about
like strangers who have lost their way,
miserable as sheep without a shepherd.