My name is Haley says the stylist, as she swivels my chair.
Tells me of her

train ride from Kansas— so many cows in Eastern Colorado!
I see

a goddess
emblazoned on her arm, swirls of indigo and vermillion from shoulder to wrist.

She texturizes, feathers, sprays me with bergamot, rubs
my forehead with the tip of a thumb.  Glows as she tilts

my head back. Oh eater of stars, how far can one bend? The mist keeps me from igniting though my hair’s

(must one push against reality to find it?)

burning: I don’t know how to stop it.

Martha Kalin has poems published or forthcoming in Anastamos, Don’t Just Sit There, Inklette, Hospital Drive and the anthology Obsession: Sestinas in the Twenty-First Century published by University Press of New England. Her chapbook, Afterlife and Mango, was published by Green Fuse Poetic Arts in 2013. She lives in Denver, Colorado.