Hair Poem #1

Say beauty, come skulking, the white sequence of birds
                        in the sky
                                       flaunting the haunt
Say tender beauty
Say beauty laid out like a yellow flower
Say     disk flower enters beauty
Say     beauty through the yellow eye, say stigma not nystagmus
Say     beauty pulsing to the left and back left and back
Say     beauty, anthemon, hidden brown ray
Say beauty in the distant moiety
Say beauty copies like the back of a hand

Hair Poem #3

Say you haven't said anything at all on beauty
                       on the right sequence of birds
                                     eliminating the sky behind them
                           their feathers loose
                    their wings taut
            a certain beauty
    fleeting across the sky
beauty looks
stunned across a child’s face        finding mother

Hair Poem #4

Say beauty = territory
Say beauty = come closer
Say beauty = not too close

Hair Poem #7

Say beauty this is really offensive, this is of course a joke
Say beauty picks up a line and throws it down the stairs
Say beauty     picks up a                            throws it         til it
                                                            stick em in the sides
Say beauty in the interiors              in the silence of extraction

Hair Poem #8

Say beauty is imaginable because it is a fantasy

Say beauty is the only reality

Say beauty in the violaceous sound

Say beauty is a black hair in a bowl of broth

Helen Quah is a British poet and doctor. Her debut chapbook Dog Woman (Out-Spoken) won the Eric Gregory Award in 2023. Her work has appeared in journals such as Lana Turner, The Poetry Review, The Rialto and the book State of Play (Out-Spoken). She is currently based in Indiana.