Hole in My Head
by Jeff Friedman
There’s a hole in my head the size of a half dollar—and who knows how deep? The surgeon advised me to leave the wound open, because, she said, it would heal faster, but it’s already been two years. When I go out, birds plunge at my bright dome. I swing my arms to keep them away, but some still land and dip their beaks into the hole as if searching for insects or worms. Something must scare them because they take off quickly. I clean out the hole with a damp piece of cloth and find leaves, stray hairs, pebbles, coins, blessings and aphorisms. For a while I wore a large bandage over the hole, but then my head would swell as if it were filling up with fluid. When I’d slowly remove the bandage, thoughts shot out and showered through the air like glitter. Always, a few broken thoughts would be stuck to the bandage. Each day, I stare into the mirror and hold a mirror over my head to get a good look inside the hole. I see some creature deep below, turning over to show its orange belly, and numerous clichés bobbing near the surface. When I shift the mirror, my head disappears, and only the hole remains.
Jeff Friedman’s seventh book of poems, Floating Tales, was published by Plume Editions/MadHat Press in fall 2017. Friedman’s poems, mini stories and translations have appeared in American Poetry Review, Poetry, New England Review,Poetry International, Plume, Hotel Amerika, New World Writing, Flashfiction.net, New England Review, Fictional International, New Flash Fiction Review, Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Flash Fiction Funny, Flash NonFiction Funny, Agni Online, The New Republic and numerous other literary magazines. He has received numerous awards and prizes including a National Endowment Literature Translation Fellowship in 2016 and two individual Artist Grants from New Hampshire Arts Council.
What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Hole in My Head”? The day after the fall term began at the small state college where I teach, I had surgery to remove a cancerous growth from the top of my head. The surgeon left a hole a little larger than the size of a quarter, in the shape of a small volcano crater. A surgeon with great confidence, she had initially offered to do the surgery while I was in class if I would agree to remain seated and also sign a waiver of liability. As a dedicated professor, I considered allowing her to do this, but then rejected the idea because I was worried that some of the more sheltered freshmen wouldn’t appreciate the real-life experience and might take it out on me in my evaluations. I filled the hole in with liquid silicone and covered that with a little liquid paper, and then topped it all off with my purple cap that is also bug resistant. Unfortunately, despite silicone’s resistance to heat, the whole damn thing melted leaving me with a gooey mess under my hat. Next, I sanded it down and painted the hole flesh tone and again covered it with a hat, but it buckled, and I was again left with my small crater. I considered placing a fancy marble in the hole and going hatless, but I was too insecure. Day after day, I wore a purple hat to class. After a few weeks, the students began clamoring for me to take the hat off. At first I said “no,” but then it dawned on me there was a buck to be made. So one overcast Wednesday in New Hampshire, I settled into my easy chair in front of the class and told the students that for 20 bucks apiece, each could take off my hat and stare straight into the hole in my skull, that if they looked deeply they might even find the key to getting an “A” in the course. I never anticipated so many of them not only buying into it, but coming back as many as ten times—200 bucks. I continued this for rest of the term and for once, I actually got paid a decent salary for teaching. I would continue this same money-making venture next term, but the hole closed up, and the scar is barely visible. I wrote “A Hole in My Head,” because I knew no one would believe the story of how I really dealt with the hole in my head.
Check out the write-up of the journal in The Writer.
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