Fred Pollack is the author of two book-length narrative poems, THE ADVENTURE and HAPPINESS, both published by Story Line Press and a collection of shorter poems, A POVERTY OF WORDS, 2015 from Prolific Press. Another collection, LANDSCAPE WITH MUTANT, is set to be published by Smokestack Books (UK), 2018. He has appeared in Hudson Review, Salmagundi, Poetry Salzburg Review, Die Gazette (Munich), The Fish Anthology (Ireland), Representations, Magma (UK), Iota (UK), Bateau, Main Street Rag, Manhattan Review, etc. Online, poems have appeared in Big Bridge, Allegro, Hamilton Stone Review, Diagram, BlazeVox, The New Hampshire Review, Mudlark, Occupoetry, Faircloth Review, Triggerfish, Thunderdome, Neglected Ratio, and others.

Bad Hair Day

I wouldn’t know. I can imagine
hour after hopeless hour
of faux pas, excessive or insufficient
tact, lost files, the assholedom
of bosses, and that’s just work-life, followed
over drinks by temblors
in already unstable friendships,
malign attempted pickups,
heartburn, punctuated throughout
by failed rebrushing. Inexplicable
curse, its own stigmata,
gone on the morrow with everything
again lovely enough … As I say,
I wouldn’t know. Men in these matters
as in so many are unjustly free,
and anyway Mother left me the gift
of baldness. Which is like
a coat of ever-fresh police-station
green on the concrete wall
of sanity. Ephemera, disgust for one’s
inert or defeated self are
burnt off, with hair, from within. It is,
as Marinetti said, “a sign of genius!!
Proof: myself. Mussolini.”