by Julie Elise Landry
The hair kept growing.
It sprouted first from the center
of her left big toe, one prickly
proboscis of straight, black hair,
a single sharpened strand—
it tasted the sweat in her socks.
Then a pair of thorny threads
in the bends of her knees, her
elbows. She chafed with each
move of the wireless mouse.
We couldn’t make our quota.
The hair kept growing.
Tweezers? No, apparently not.
Hooks of the hair rooted into layers
of subcutaneous tissue and muscle.
One tentative plucking charged
her whole arm with paperclip pains.
Tender nerves. Bad for business.
From underneath her fingernails,
stubble grew to astroturf pins
that pierced back in to fleshy beds
with each datum entered. They said
she cried without closing her door
as the first hairs thickened her pupils.
The hair kept growing.
Even from her love
handles. Too many birthdays, cakes fattening waists—
while new hairs grew
through polo shirt fibers. A poorly-
made plush
monster.
At odds with our culture.
I let her go
when she melted
our microwave.
Julie Elise Landry writes and edits things—poems, grants, novels, press releases. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in diode poetry journal, A-minor Magazine, Backchannels Journal, HOOT Review, and more. She holds an MA in English from the University of Louisiana at Monroe, and she is pursuing an MFA in poetry from the University of New Orleans. In 2023, she received an Honorable Mention for UNO’s Vassar Miller Poetry Award. Julie grew up in New Orleans, and she serves as an Associate Poetry Editor of Bayou Magazine.