was standing in the bathroom shaving my head
when the news came through about how britney
had died & i just choked up you know i had an
emotional malfunction kept scratching my face
like some academic stunned by the shrill levity
that followed & all the drive-time scrambling for
moronic puns as far as i could tell no one really
cared about britney at all it was as if she hadn’t
actually died but only gone crazy maybe shaved
her head for cancer research i looked at the tufts
of my hair on the tiles & started crying i didn’t
know why but somehow they reminded me of
french collaborators during the war the women
paraded in village squares & their shaved heads
the self-righteous stares & the grim satisfaction
as if you could eradicate someone’s shame with
a pair of clippers & therefore exonerate society
or just yourself i swept up my dwindling clumps
& thought it’s no use selling this on ebay is it?
when it just grows back (unlike a severed head
i switched the radio off & britney was still dead