new from above/ground press: SPECTACLE/SPECTATOR, by Noah Sparrow

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

To order, send cheques (add $2 for postage; in US, add $3; outside North America, add $7) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com