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Director of People & Operations

Updated: 2 days ago

by Julie Elise Landry



The hair kept growing.


It sprouted first from the center

of her left big toe, one prickly

proboscis of straight, black hair,

a single sharpened strand—

it tasted the sweat in her socks.


Then a pair of thorny threads

in the bends of her knees, her

elbows. She chafed with each

move of the wireless mouse.

We couldn’t make our quota.


The hair kept growing.


Tweezers? No, apparently not.

Hooks of the hair rooted into layers

of subcutaneous tissue and muscle.

One tentative plucking charged

her whole arm with paperclip pains.

Tender nerves. Bad for business.


From underneath her fingernails,

stubble grew to astroturf pins

that pierced back in to fleshy beds

with each datum entered. They said

she cried without closing her door

as the first hairs thickened her pupils.


The hair kept growing.


Even from her love

handles. Too many birthdays, cakes fattening waists—

while new hairs grew

through polo shirt fibers. A poorly-

made plush

monster.


At odds with our culture.

I let her go

when she melted

our microwave. 



 


Julie Elise Landry writes and edits things—poems, grants, novels, press releases. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in diode poetry journal, A-minor Magazine, Backchannels Journal, HOOT Review, and more. She holds an MA in English from the University of Louisiana at Monroe, and she is pursuing an MFA in poetry from the University of New Orleans. In 2023, she received an Honorable Mention for UNO’s Vassar Miller Poetry Award. Julie grew up in New Orleans, and she serves as an Associate Poetry Editor of Bayou Magazine.

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