levelheaded: Grooming

“Grooming” is two poems: the first one is everything that happens before the last line, and the second is the last line followed by a second reading of the same happenings. We mean that as far as the reading experience goes. Once you find out this is possibly a break-up poem, everything you read before the last line takes on a more focused meaning, tempting you to read again and search for early signs of what you now know happens in the end, enjoy the romance before it’s over.

Or, it may not be a poem about romance or breakup at all. It could be, as the title suggests, a rich description of grooming, full of ecstasy of sound and sight: “bristle brush / buffs,” “copper color / shines,” a “fire ring,” “steaming liquid”, “rake fingers across scalp,” “a gift of mice and birds”, and on we go until the mild September sun idyllically dries the speaker’s skin and… it’s over.

Let’s stay with the first reading though; perhaps it isn’t a tragic love story but definitely a passionate episode between “I” and “him” with plenty of skin and body in a rhythmic delivery (short lines and said alliteration), ending swiftly and with conviction. We can guess what it was that already “he knew” or what’s being revealed as “I told him” is repeated twice late in the poem. Reading the line “wrong he thought” we witness an idea being negated, assumed and then refuted. This tension forms the poem’s ambiance, and calls for repeated readings.

There are several combination of lines that in vacuum would be sentimental or pastoral with lines that out of context would be aggressive, gritty. Like “wild wind blows my hair” that follows a “trim ragged fingernails / with a keen blade.” Or earlier, the move from “brown as a swamp muck” to “step onto soft ground.” Rather than confusion, these combinations tell us the full story, perhaps the highs and lows, or maybe more simply the extremities of this experience, void of judgement.

– The Editors