Ode to my one weirdly long arm hair | James Cole

Ode to my one weirdly long arm hair

that I cut you with surgical scissors, the ones
                            I use to split the lidded eye	
                 that I know you
as an invisible blonde, though in my aging I grow
                            darker by in blight. 	
               becoming, in sheepish sense, 
father to a talisman, that I spoke thread and now
		             I glean this wheat
	       of me, my fields a pair of fore-veins,
fallow plough works kept clutter null in gold.
		            I would, if you were
	      still with me, give you as a gift
to some storied hero deprived of golden boon
		             who must loose his heavy
             halyard and sail to meet his imprisoned
lover in a donjon across the sea. 
		            Sooner, I could let
             you grow, and warp so long you poke 
out every needle’s eye, string them all together
                            into chimes of cuspate sheer,
	      tie hooks and pinch with leaden sinkers
to cast, and fish, and never again fear hunger. 
		            And if I did not kill you,
	       you would be with me in those hours
when loathing struts and claps its fulcrum bell
		             along my streets, the cure
	     it sells, a miracle, and I can attest:
‘it’s true,’ I tell myselves, ‘if I can grow an arm
	    hair as long as this, it’s all true!’
		          You are with me
	    even if a nub, even if your root be plucked,
or scraped in some dragging from my seat
		            to dance, even if 
	       in oil you escape, be it popped from
frying pan or pyre, be it vivacious, sebaceous, supreme.
		            You may leave,
	      but don’t ask me. You don’t need my
permission. I am not my arm. You are not a guest.

James Cole is a poet, author, filmmaker, and scientist based out of Charlottesville, VA. He is currently working on his Ph.D. in neuroscience at the University of Virginia. His writings have appeared in numerous journals, including Poetica Review, Artemis Journal, and Carolina Muse, among others. In 2019, he released his first collection, Crow, come home, through VerbalEyze Press. James also servse as an editor for The Rumen Literary Journal.