HAIRCUT STORIESLYDIA COPELAND
FLASH FICTION
20 PGS.
"A joy to read. Each piece in this collection is its own world, beautifully wrought. Lydia Copeland's prose poetry shimmers off the page."
- Kathy Fish
HAIRCUT
"I'm drawn to the strong, sensual voice in these lovely, visceral pieces by Lydia Copeland, for the way she loads her prose with physical details that become much greater than their sum. Her unsentimental observations are to be savored - visions of family life, family solidarity, and unexpected violence. She shows us how the living go about the impossible through characters that are equally delicate and strong. The driving rhythm in these prose poems create the effect of music on the reader- the cumulative effect is stunning."
- Meg Pokrassexcerpt from HAIRCUT STORIES:
SOMETIMES BALLOONS
I undressed in front of the window without thinking and tied the gown on backwards so that it opened in the front. My husband was driving home to finish packing a bag. He would call his mother to ask for Blowpops and Chapstick. I’d said those were necessities. It was snowing. All over town, cars slid on black ice. I wore ballet slippers in the hospital bed, removed them during delivery, slipped them on again to and from the bathroom. I knew our baby’s cry down the hallway. I knew the night nurse had let me sleep when I’d asked her not to. Now we live in a different state. My husband talks about how our friends have it easy, how he wishes he’d become a paratrooper instead. Now our son is on his third haircut. And I work in a plain building, floors and floors above the city. Sometimes plastic shopping bags float by my window, sometimes balloons. I boil water for tea, and read and read and watch my bosses come in and out of the room. My hands are gray with carbon copy. My skin is always thirsty. Now my husband takes the night’s last train. He eats the dinner I left without reheating, turns pages of a magazine on the couch. When he comes to bed, he nuzzles my neck, but we sleep back to back.
I undressed in front of the window without thinking and tied the gown on backwards so that it opened in the front. My husband was driving home to finish packing a bag. He would call his mother to ask for Blowpops and Chapstick. I’d said those were necessities. It was snowing. All over town, cars slid on black ice. I wore ballet slippers in the hospital bed, removed them during delivery, slipped them on again to and from the bathroom. I knew our baby’s cry down the hallway. I knew the night nurse had let me sleep when I’d asked her not to. Now we live in a different state. My husband talks about how our friends have it easy, how he wishes he’d become a paratrooper instead. Now our son is on his third haircut. And I work in a plain building, floors and floors above the city. Sometimes plastic shopping bags float by my window, sometimes balloons. I boil water for tea, and read and read and watch my bosses come in and out of the room. My hands are gray with carbon copy. My skin is always thirsty. Now my husband takes the night’s last train. He eats the dinner I left without reheating, turns pages of a magazine on the couch. When he comes to bed, he nuzzles my neck, but we sleep back to back.
