Ariana Grande Comes to Lunch: A Modern Tableau En Famille*

Image source

Just as we’re sitting down to Sunday lunch—
Sunday lunch where we gather mainly out of obligation
(well, that’s how I see it anyhow)—just as we’re
settling in, that capering miscreation Joshua,
my daughter Clare’s “partner”, the American kindergarten teacher,
always the first to be seated, begins again (again, mind) 
to waggle his head, slowly from one side to the other.

Eyes wide open, he moves his head over so far
the ear almost touches the shoulder. Then it’s over
to the other side. And back again. Off we go.

One doesn’t know where to look.

He learned the technique at pilates.
It relaxes the tightened muscles in his neck, he says,
clears his head, realigns his chakras, relieves stress.

So, I say:

The reason your neck muscles are giving you trouble
is because you’ve got too many turns on that, er, topknot.
Katherine Hepburn never wound hers up like that.
Too much torque, that’s your problem, mate.

Just then his head pauses in that pendulum-like interval
between oscillations. He stops and addresses me from the
perfectly horizontal—his eyes now lined up vertically
like a traffic light—he addresses me in that patient, world-weary,
solicitous voice he uses with misbehaving children, small dogs and
people over 60. 

“It’s a man-bun, Dad,” he says.

“Call it a man’s bum. Call it a saddle horn.
Call it a chignon. Call it a newel post finial.
Call it what you like, but you’ve over-torqued it 
like a Clapham facelift, and sure you’ll get headaches. 
Ariana Grande must have terrible headaches.”

“It’s a man-bun, Dad,” Clare says, enunciating slowly. 
Her mother makes an awkward cough and glances out the window.

Clare gently places her hand over Joshua’s: some kind of
gesture of support, I suppose.

So, I say:

“Whatever it is, it’s been ratcheted up too damned tight.
More Hepburn, less Grande. That’ll sort you out.
Maybe then we won’t have to watch the spectacle
you put on with your wagging head every time
you come to the table.”

Joshua slowly rights his head, as if it’s being winched 
up off a welding table by an invisible block and tackle. 
He sighs.

I decide not to correct him, for now, on his use of “Dad”.
I’m not his father. I’m not even his father-in-law. 
(They’re shacked up.)

I’ll not correct him on that… yet.
Nor will I ask whether they share “scrunchies”.

Not yet.

*This poem is part of a suite of poems—a work-in-progress—provisionally entitled “The Curmudgeon’s Diary”.

P.W. Bridgman’s third and fourth books— Idiolect (poetry) and The Four-Faced Liar (short fiction)—were published in 2021 by Ekstasis Editions. His writing has appeared in, among others, The Moth Magazine, The Glasgow Review of Books, The Honest Ulsterman, The Galway Review, LitroUK, LitroNY, The High Window, The Maynard, The Antigonish Review, and Grain. Follow him on Twitter @PWB_writer1