Oh whisker whisperer, wrangler of strays, 
slayer of superfluous hairs whose appearance mar 
my face’s better form, may you be forgiven 
your occasional pinch or slip, 
grabbing the benign instead of the misplaced masculine. 

Oh tweezers, stuck between tease and wheeze, 
you guide the quest of my later years 
to find and eradicate the errant visitors. 
We tug in the hope of meeting my lovelier twin 
bristle-free in the magnifying mirror. 

Elaine Mintzer

is an LA poet who was a teacher. Poetry taught her how to teach geometry, and geometry taught her to be a better poet. Her work has been published in journals and anthologies including Gyroscope Review, Last Call, Chinaski, Beloit Poetry Review, Panoplyzine, Slipstream Press, Perspectives, Borders and Boundaries, Mom Egg Review, Subprimal Poetry Art, Lummox, The Ekphrastic Review, Cultural Weekly, Rattle, and The Lindenwood Review, as well as in Lucid Moose Lit’s Like a Girl anthology and 13 Los Angeles Poets: The Onthebus Poets Series. Her collection, Natural Selections, was published by Bombshelter Press in 2005.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ On Becoming Birds, from Mintzer’s “My Metamorphosis Series” at Silver Birch Press (28 August 2015)

⚡ Equilibrium in Gyroscope Review (Crone Power Issue, Fall 2020; page 56)

⚡ Giverny, ekphrastic prose poem (and author’s note re Claude Monet’s work) from Mintzer’s “My Perfect Vacation Series” at Silver Birch Press (1 August 2015)