By Alice Shapiro

Beating footprints on concrete

leaves marks and shadows if we turn to look.

The neck, curious as Lot’s wife

commands reversal

and possible blockage to a pleasant walk.

The head, that fragile instrument of peace and evil

guides and reasons, soothes, abuses

invests, invites, deletes.

Mine in particular is king

or queen subordinating limbs

and organs, feet

do its bidding.

I am my head.

It is sometimes red and wrathful

green and cool

it takes me where it wants to

an everlasting tool

like driver’s education school.

I cannot turn it off

even if it acts The Fool.

I plan to take it with me

in its spirit body

when a head no longer rules

this solitary earthly journey.

By Annmarie Lockhart

I had the great honor of publishing Alice Shapiro’s “A-head” at vox poetica as part of Contributor Series 5: Dramatis Personae, a series that explored the topic of identity. I’ve come to think of “A-head” as the first poem in this collection, a collection that also explores identity, using the template laid down by Shakespeare and deftly lifting the corners of curtains to give readers a glimpse into those hidden spaces where the self dances in the dark before no perceived audience. It’s a messy room, piles of stripped-off clothes on the floor, books scattered across the bed, sheets rumpled and lumped, cosmetic spills in sticky splotches in front of the mirror, shoes kicked off and tripped over from bed to door. Don’t we all recognize not only the dwelling of our personae, but the various poses practiced in this habitation as well?

Alice’s poem, employing imagery from the Bible to the Bard, invites us to play peek-a-boo with her identity and our own. She warns us to leave our vanity at the door and to brace for untapped potential instead of profound accomplishment. Her tone, while unflinching, is also affectionate and playful (see the rhyme sequence in stanza 2), and this is what endears the reader to the work, the unseen audience to the dancer, the introspective self to the exhibitionist personalities pirouetting around the room. The first stanza invites us to examine our own “footprints over concrete,” an image suggestive at once of sidewalk artwork and time-worn crumbles, and to risk seeing what we do not wish to see. She identifies us with Lot’s wife and paints our need to witness as the great self-imposed impediment to happiness.

The second stanza ties the narrator (and by extension, the reader) to the fallible “head,” capricious as it may be: “It’s sometimes red and wrathful/green and cool” and Alice goes on to decree: “I cannot turn it off/even if it acts The Fool.” And this is the crux upon which the poem, and also Saltian the book, seems to balance: we are who we are, study it, ignore it, dress it up or play it down, but we are still, in the end, stuck with it. This can be a frightening prospect when one considers the darker elements Alice hints at here and explores to a greater degree in the book, but the genius of the poem lies in the redemption found in its final four lines: “I plan to take it with me/in its spirit body/when a head no longer rules/this solitary earthly journey.” And what a redemption it is, speaking of transformation, legacy, and spirituality while steering clear of dogma, creed, and faith. I would not change a thing in this poem.

This declared acceptance of self, with all its inherent flaws and faults, has been integral to this work-in-progress. Not every writer would open herself to wholesale commentary and critique. Alice Shapiro has offered her words up to public scrutiny with openness and grace. As we embark on the next phase of production Alice will be reconsidering each of these poems in the light of the suggestions seen here. I don’t have any idea what the final poems will look like; I suspect Alice doesn’t either. But I do know this work has been dynamic and energetic and alive and once again, I am honored to be a part of its publication.

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Annmarie Lockhart is the founding editor of vox poetica (an online literary salon dedicated to bringing poetry into the every day) and unbound CONTENT (an independent press for a boundless age). Her own poetry has been published at fine journals in print and online. A lifelong resident of Bergen County NJ, she lives two miles east of the hospital where she was born.