Live Encounters Poetry & Writing January 2025
Two Poems by Gillian Roach.
Things Hairdressers’ Kids Know
It’s only hair,
it will grow back.
Pride feels no pain.
Time spent angsting
over a fringe or long bob
is all our time wasted.
Those small snips that sneak
past the black cape
into collars or cowl and needle
as they dry
are just desperate
not to separate.
Hair is technically dead but listen
to the hair, it knows
what colour it should be, what shape.
Sometimes the hair knows
she went too far and wants
to get back a head.
I start a poem
after reading hot new girl
the moult we know
it’s coming
through the long nights
of Matariki
puffas All Black tests
tights and boots
and into spring
when the sun rises
lemon-jelly tart
they cannot wish
their feathers back faster
who will champion
the transitioner pin cushion
plumage in disarray
so many fail
to get past the dogs
© Gillian Roach
Napier poet Gillian Roach won the NEW VOICES – Emerging Poets Competition 2018 and was awarded runner-up in the The Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence of Poems in 2018 and 2019. She has been published in Landfall, Takahe and the Poetry NZ yearbook.