Fleetwood Mac is old but they have a big
announcement coming up live at the top of the hour

after this quick break and your local weather
and I think a lot of young women

associate themselves with Stevie Nicks
because they, too, would constantly like

a spectral box fan to be blowing
through their haircuts while their heads

radiate luminous plasma that interferes
with drive-time radio signals and Magnetic North.

Yes, it’s not good wanting to be something else,
cajoling a new image from the butterfly-quiet street,

being someone decent enough to carry thrift-store
Mason jars full of pickles in a first-baseman’s mitt

to a shut-in neighbor even with a hangover,
but we gather terror with ourselves,

our post-reflection shudders pushing the goose feather
balanced rocky on your nude shoulder to the floor.

Back when flannel grew on trees, in the land of buzz cuts,
I grew my hair longer than a hotel bible.

In the Midwest, lag time’s a levee,
so while I tucked strands behind my ears,

Brooklyn gave itself horizontal fringe
like a Brutus-stabbed dictator and now I’m bald

and constantly being mistaken for somebody else
but like a social class clown, I go with it until I can’t,

the slang of the mandatory blowing up inside me.