SPECTACLE/SPECTATOR
Noah Sparrow
$6
Meditations During my Hair Emergency
Every Wednesday
an hour of my day
is filled
like the bucket
right by my socks
The soap gradually
climbs further
into nailbeds,
the floor
washed in
a weekly
showering
And to make it
all better,
I’m wearing
a hair-mask from
Sephora, from
a kind of
buy-something
get-something-else
sort of deal,
And now this room
is stripped of bad air,
refilled from
all kinds of soap of
floor beneath me
Stripped of a dusting
to make room
as I prepare
to my sanity to roll out
like an overly commanding
carpet, waiting to
be stepped on
and kind of wanting it
to be that way
This kind of removal of
dust and crumbs
would be borderline
excessive anywhere else
but here
And an hour ago
I saw a man
unhoused,
washing somebody
else's car
A car holds
little-to-no
boundaries on where
it can move and
if you don’t believe
me, just look at
the commercials,
Look at the men
rolling through forestry,
framed by the evergreens,
the occasional bear
If I tried to clean off
that mans floors,
it would take a
million hours and a
million buckets and all
the borders
would collapse behind us
If you look behind
the car,
you’ll hear
more and more honking
until the driver
speeds through,
until the bubbles of soap
forfeit clinging onto wrists,
until seasons change
and the floor
turns into ice
published in Ottawa by above/ground press
January 2026
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy
Noah Sparrow is a Montreal-Tiohtià:ke based writer. His chapbook Here I am Dying at an Average Pace is forthcoming with Cactus Press in 2026. He won the Gabriel Safdie Poetry Award, was a finalist for the 2024 Montreal International Poetry Prize, and was shortlisted for the 2025 International Metatron Poetry Prize. Check out his work in The Fiddlehead, Scrivener Creative Review, or find more at noahsparrow.com
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