How to Detangle a Bird Caught in Your Hair

By HOLLIE HARDY

First you have to have hair. This trend toward baldness negates the problem.

Once you have grown a luscious mane, gather images on your lion tongue: ripe peaches, sizzle of bacon, crisp campfire scent of an almost winter night, handful of rain or feathers or marbles, the details of sunset, and and fast cars. Weave your materials carefully. Remember that birds like shiny things. The colors and flavors you choose may affect the type of bird you lure into your hair-nest.

It helps to know what you’re looking for. The hummingbird is popular due to its size and general friendliness. The swan is elegant but angry. Loons, pelicans and ostriches are obviously to be avoided.

With patience, you will eventually find a bird snarled in your hair. It might not be the bird you initially had in mind. But give it some time. This one may surprise you.

Protect your eyes and face as you attempt to pet the iridescent feathers of your albatross or owl. Avoid wearing a hat. In the event that you tire of this entanglement, the following options are available:

1. Tenderly cut the bird away like a piece of gum from a child’s hair.

2. Start a small fire on the back of your head and begin to run.

Hollie Hardy is an MFA poet at San Francisco State University, former Editor-in-Chief of Fourteen HIlls: The SFSU Review, and co-host of the monthly reading series Saturday Night Special, an East Bay Open Mic, in Berkeley, California. Her recent work is published in Eleven Eleven, sParkle & bLINK, A Sharp Piece of Awesome, Parthenon West Review, One Ded Cow, Transfer, Milvia Street, and other journals. Hardy’s Survival Poems have titles ruthlessly appropriated from The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook.