Barbershop It's my father's turn in the barber chair. There's Albert, who plays gospel radio as he hums and snips and talks the weather to death. Yessir, it sure is hot today, it sure is. That's a fact. It's the truth. Hot as the dickens. 'Most hot as the place where the wicked go. So hot we're all sinners and that place is this place. Mighty, mighty warm. Father is dozing, as he always does. It's not just Albert - he could've drawn Bobby or his little brother Max, both with their hands full of towhead boy my age. Three chairs but a passle of waiting. No comic books here I haven't read. Heckfire, I read 'em all last time we were here. Wish they'd get some new ones, and better, none of this Donald Duck or Casper or even Archie, though Betty and Veronica are wearing short skirts. This is a man's place - we need a man's reading here. Like Blackhawk and PT Boat Skipper Capt. Storm and Sgt. Rock and Easy Company. Or Jason and the Argonauts, like in school --I don't look in mirrors quite the same way. Anything with raw, gut-rippin' action --Rat Patrol or Fightin' Navy. Kid Colt. Star Spangled War Stories, featuring Enemy Ace, but I read it last time. Twice. Father's dead to the world. His chin hangs. Albert tilts it upward. It dips again. Raise your chin a little, he says. No chance. He's asleep. Albert props it with one hand, operates the clippers with the other. That sound. I never hear that sound at home. Closest I ever get to hearing that buzz around the house is at our cousins'. They got one of those new electric knives for carving meat. Uncle Mick shaves a roast or pork butt or turkey breast in two shakes. We don't own one. We use the same old blade the cavemen used. Bend your head down a tad, Albert cues Father. It's already down. He removes that kind of tight-fitting bib that keeps the little hairs from falling down your shirt onto your skin and making you itch. He uses his whisk broom to brush free any powdery hair that clings there. Max finishes Melvin Claypole, takes his buck, gives him four-bits change, a balloon, and a stick of Juicy Fruit. There ya go, Max says. Say hi to your sister for me. Before I'll climb in the chair Max'll go to the toilet for the pushbroom and sweep up all the hair, black and brown and blond and white and silver, from underneath his chair and Bobby's and Albert's. Father's locks are last to join up. It's like he gets his hair cut twice - once off his head, and again off the floor. Max shaves the black and white linoleum with his broom. It even looks like a razor, the kind Father uses. But the barber's special razor looks like it could kill a man, slit his throat, slice off his nose or ear. It don't shave so much as scrape. I'm ten years old but I have a girlfriend. She lives next door. They moved in last year. Her mother is Sister's al-ge-bra teacher in seventh grade. My girl's named Angeila. Don't call her Angela, she hates that and so do I. Angeila, that's her name. It's a pretty name. I don't shave but she makes me wish I do. I can't wait until I sit in the barber chair and say to the barber, I really need a shave. Gimme the works - talcum and witch hazel and eau de co-lo-nee. If it smells, I want it. How could a man drift off with Albert, Max, and Bobby doing that for him? I'm just a kid but Father's old - 53. Wonder what he dreams up there and what about. WW2, maybe. Cars. Goin' fishin' when he was a boy. Gals. Nah, he's married--he's got no use for gals. Asked him once and he said, as we drove home, the mailboxes and telephone poles and street signs and trees and bushes and buildings falling back like whiskers to a razor, parting like the Red Sea before Moses, I'm just resting my eyes up there, Son. And he laughs--I figure it for a joke, see, so I laugh, too, but I still don't get it. It takes a sharp blade to smooth the edges off a man. One time Albert nicked him with the straight-razor and father yelped Goddamn! which Albert didn't much appreciate , the Lord's Name being took in vain and all. But he got the message and was careful after that. I was halfway through Justice League, Wonder Woman using her magic lasso to rope the Martian Manhunter and yank him away from flames--he's super but fire is his form of green kryptonite, fire is his Achilles'-athlete's foot, and the evil T. O. Morrow had him in a bad way, when this happened. You take all that hair they sweep up every day and you could make one bodacious toupee. If it was me I'd give it to the bald, whose naked heads are starving for such stuff. When Albert loosens Father's collar and swooshes the cape from off him he always snaps out of his slumber, Father, I mean. I go next because I'm his son and we came in together besides. I don't like Albert--he smells like religion and you never hear Buck Owens or Elvis on his radio. Just "Blessed Assurance" and "Rock of Ages" and "How Great Thou Art" and "The Old Rugged Cross" and "Amazing Grace" and "Faith of Our Fathers" and "The Lord's Prayer." You don't see women in here. They're at home, waiting for us. Mothers and daughters and sisters and wives. Aunts, grannies, and girlfriends. I like women but wouldn't marry one if I could help it, which I can't, which is natural. Except Mother, who's made me what I am, and even she ain't my type. There's Angelia, but she's a daddy's girl. There's Wonder Woman, but she's beyond me. There's Medusa, but I'm scared of her hair.
Gale Acuff has had hundreds of poems published in a dozen countries and has authored three books of poetry. His poems have appeared in Pulsebeat, Ascent, Reed, Arkansas Review, Poem, Slant, Aethlon, Florida Review, South Carolina Review, Carolina Quarterly, Roanoke Danse Macabre, Ohio Journal, Sou’wester, South Dakota Review, North Dakota Quarterly, New Texas, Midwest Quarterly, Poetry Midwest, Adirondack Review, Worcester Review, Adirondack Review, Connecticut River Review, Delmarva Review, Maryland Poetry Review, Maryland Literary Review, George Washington Review, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Ann Arbor Review, Plainsongs, Chiron Review, George Washington Review, McNeese Review, Weber, War, Literature & the Arts, Poet Lore, Able Muse, The Font, Fine Lines, Teach.Write., Oracle, Hamilton Stone Review, Sequential Art Narrative in Education, Cardiff Review, Tokyo Review, Indian Review, Muse India, Bombay Review, Westerly, and many other journals. Gale has taught tertiary English courses in the US, PR China, and Palestine.
Pulsebeat Poetry Journal 