A Haberdasher’s Spectacle

Hats I neither own nor have doffed or thrown willy-nilly into the air.

Calico Cat hats and hats made from Ruggeri and ammonite, a haberdasher’s spectacle of hats, caps, bonnets and toques. A milliner’s hatter of hats: bonnets, caps, toques, boaters, bucket hats, fedoras, pointy, slouchy, sun bonnets, Trilbies, Balmoral Bonnet, Borsalino, zucchetto, turban, Boucle, capuchon, Taqiyah, Suma cap, Flat cap, garrison cap, wedge cap, rain hat, kepi, skullcap cap, Kufi cap, Nasaq toque, Salakot, newsboy cap and the nightcap cap.

da drew a bead
jowl to shoulder
then backed off as the calf’s
head fell, calving season
came late that year, too
late for prayers or
da’s temper

The clochard met the harridan who in turn met the man in the hat at the church bazaar, the second of the year. The harridan’s sister was busy arranging her knick-knacks, Pop-sickle stick figurines and dollies tatted from old rags and shoestring, an assortment of glass jars, some blue and red, others red and blue, and gunboats made from Paper-Mache, when the clochard appeared to the left of her, his eyes closed tighter than a pugilist’s fist. ‘Orange’ he said in a hissing staccato, ‘lime sherbet and kiwi’.

da
poached
flies with the
cob of his tongue
drawing blood
blacker than
quid

your eyes two greenstones
dulse blue lips that bespoke not a lie; I make paper kites

without tails: palmaria palmate, you said
you’re lips making a pocking sound

I will gather your hair into a skein
the taut of my fingers ferrying knots into bows

then I will lay you in the crib of my arms
a child’s smirk on the kip of my face