Finger-Combing My Hair
Sometimes I believe the most I want to do
Is pull a strand of hair out from the root.
This little one caught in an outer eyelash
Is the strand my fingers fix on, a faded
Blonde thread, elastic and fragile.
I sink its line into my index finger.
That is to say, sometimes the most I want
To do is show you the illusion
Of transparency: the strand of hair
Like Cestum veneris, the Venus girdle.
Its graceful body not blonde, but a delicate
Violet color composed of a broad band
Of jelly held by a layer of cells so thin
And wing-like, it seems a single breath
Could break it. Better in the company
Of angels. Immaterial and ribboning,
The comb jelly rows all tucked on one side
While the mouth is on the other, led
By the oral edge, swimming horizontally.
The bioluminescence proved it was there,
Alive, swimming in slow and graceful fashion.
When looking right through it, one could see
An undistorted reef or rock on the other side.
At times they occur in such prodigious quantities
In the Atlantic, it seems as if one can
Walk on the water made dense by their numbers,
Disrupted and bumbling, suddenly
Maddened by anything. Waves are stilled—
The surface slightly bumpy as their little
Jelly-bodies thrust up by the crowding beneath.
Taylor J. Johnson’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Birmingham Poetry Review and One. She is currently a graduate student in the creative writing program at Texas Tech University.
Header photo by Damsea, courtesy Shutterstock. Photo of Taylor J. Johnson by Anna Claire Beasly.
