Philly Chapbook Review is pleased to present two original poems by Irene Cunningham as our third biweekly featured poet of the Summer 2026 issue.
Poems
The Blind Hairdresser
She takes your head off,
props it elsewhere… wants to feel
where you should be in the world,
how she can assist.
An assistant cuts.
Hairdresser kneads your scalp
seeks the real you,
manipulates everything;
renovation empties the trash.
Inside, nothing hurts.
The end feels like swimming
in cloud; you’re light as duck-down,
ready to face a world
where conflict is breakfast cereal.
The Present Mrs Merlin
Sunset & purple seas in a hospital waiting room; visual haiku to make you think it’s the beginning of the end. He’s at home scratching on paper. At times I ponder Mrs Merlin of the dark ages, if he cut spells into her walls in the middle of the night. The-powers-that-be trail me… even into Marks & Sparks for my yearly knickers – if you’re married to magic you’re expected to act in secret, fart purple, blink dancing-to-death curses at anybody who looks cross-eyed at you. If only I could watch my fingers flick & twist.
Right now he’s slipping down slippery slopes studying all Sherlock & Columbo to learn how not to get caught, how to expel so-called leaders, fix the country. I’d take the letter o out, add a hyphen after t. He’s sneaky, cleverer than a mouse in a memorised maze. I sift back decades of waiting for handsome, sharp, charming him to become scratchily-striking white-haired older man with beard. I’m just getting to see the start of it. My Merlin is a catch. He’ll draw others in after I’m gone, be long-lived.
I’ll have consumed a spectacular life with a natural Earthed human. I wanted bottled peace, matured, and to walk tightropes wearing the wrong clothes, trailing chiffon like him in Pricilla Queen of the Desert up on that giant high-heel. I’m a tart for floaty stuff and sudden scenes. No one knows how to change it or us. Look at Game of Thrones… the almighty fuck-up she made in mad thinking that the answer was simple. We’re not that, never were… will only get worse.
If all our days were peaceful, we’d only exist in light breezes. He’ll marry digital, move from single-finger pointing to blurred thumbs. I can see his 150th birthday; he’d be a Substacker or whatever the next generation calls it, if he was allowed to be seen & heard – if we let them stuff us right down the rabbit hole. I’ll be glad to be elsewhere or nowhere. My only nightmare is Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Forced cult. Is that being calculated to go on the menu?
About “The Blind Hairdresser”
It took a little while to dig this poem’s birth out, especially since I am a writer with a laptop obsession, but I found the first version and could see the final poem inside it. I live in Brighton, a little city at the bottom of England, and we (a scattered few other writers) scribble in cafes several times a week. I wrote this poem in a Kemp Town café, March 2022, a tarot card as prompt; Dreams of Gaia; they were beautiful. I think the character in the cards was blindfolded or wore a mask; I didn’t take note of the card then. Looking at the few images of the deck on Aeclectic’s website, it may have been, Queen of Earth. The woman’s head & hair are lavishly dressed. I probably leapt off the logic of the hairdresser being blind and therefore had to work on the head/body/mind rather than just hair as a surface issue of presentation. This poem has been thrown out into the world more than a few times… and now it has landed here. It hasn’t had too much of an axe taken to it; I can be a wild woman in the editing process.
Author Bio
Irene Cunningham, a Glaswegian living in Brighton, has been anthologized, magazined & collected, nominated for the Pushcart Prize, won Autumn Voices memoir competition, and decades ago, won a week at Arvon with Roger McGough. Books: SANDMEN: A Space Odyssey (Hedgehog Press, 2019), poetry conversation with Diana Devlin. No Country for Old Woman (Dreich Press, 2022). Talking to Walls, Up@Ground Level, Cartoon Cavalcade, Amazon 2023-26. She is building collections to clear space in her life and concentrate on neglected novel-writing. At the moment drowning in poems, kidnapped, mobbed.
Contents
“This language offers one possible framing through which to appreciate the law’s capacity to hope for, request, and even command commitment to a more just future.” Read two poems by Maggie Wang, our first biweekly poet of the Summer 2026 issue, along with a few words about “Possibilities for Action.”
Chapbook Poem: I’ll Never Look This Good Again by Douglas Piccinnini
“[The poem] came out of real pressure: despair, worry, and grief I wanted to hold unflinchingly, alongside the anxiety of becoming a parent… For me the poem became a meditation on all the feeling that surfaces precisely when we’re told to feel only joy.” Read an excerpt from Douglas Piccinnini’s chapbook, House of Bad Memories, along with a few words from the poet.
“She sees herself in carbon, the element that bonds with almost anything- not because it wants to, but because it has empty spaces and things keep showing up to fill them. Notifications. Noise. Needs that never stop arriving.” Read four poems by Joely Williams, our second biweekly poet of the Summer 2026 issue, along with a few words about “Single Mother Considers the Periodic Table.”
ADHD in a Non-ADHD World: on Undersight by Alison Hurwitz
“[Hurwitz] shares moments of angst and moments of awe. More than that, there are moments of deep recognition. She sees herself in [her sons] and, in fact, receives a later-life ADHD diagnosis of her own.” Read the full chapbook review by new contributor, Nancy Murphy.
“The woman’s head & hair are lavishly dressed. I probably leapt off the logic of the hairdresser being blind and therefore had to work on the head/body/mind rather than just hair as a surface issue of presentation.” Read two poems by Irene Cunningham, our third biweekly poet of the Summer 2026 issue, along with a few words about “The Blind Hairdresser.”