for digital spoken-word readings
You can do it with a bandanna.
You can do it with a folded bandanna
and a rubberband.
You can do it with a folded bandanna
and a rubberband or two,
It won’t protect you
but you can do it with a bandanna.
You can do it with a folded bandanna
and a rubberband and a coffee filter—
we prefer unused to used.
It won’t protect you
but you can do it with a bandanna.
You can do it with a folded bandanna
and a rubberband and a furnace filter
if your furnace filter is not too dirty.
Cut into pieces.
If you don’t have scissors, use a knife,
we prefer clean to unclean.
You can do it with a bandanna.
You can do it with an old t-shirt.
You can do it with a bra cup.
You can do it with a pair of jockey shorts
just pull them over your head
and peer through the leg holes--
again we prefer unused to used.
You can do it with half a grapefruit
You can do it with paper towels.
If you can find it,
you can do it with toilet paper.
Wrap a roll of toilet paper around your head.
Punch out eyeholes, but be careful of your eyes.
Better, put a pillow case over your head
after poking out eyeholes with a dirty screwdriver.
You can even do it with a banana
or at least the banana skins
and a little gorilla glue--
we don’t advise it, it won’t protect,
but you’ll feel better if you do.
Lois Marie Harrod’s latest collection Woman was published by Blue Lyra in February 2020. Her Nightmares of the Minor Poet appeared in June 2016 from Five Oaks; her chapbook And She Took the Heart appeared in January 2016; Fragments from the Biography of Nemesis (Cherry Grove Press) and the chapbook How Marlene Mae Longs for Truth (Dancing Girl Press) appeared in 2013. A Dodge poet, she is published in literary journals and online ezines from American Poetry Review to Zone 3. She teaches at the Evergreen Forum in Princeton and at The College of New Jersey.