When I stopped shaving under my arms when I stopped shaving the leg I was not thinking about you. The young woman stuffed her shirt with tissues for tips. Haslam was not this woman. Haslam stops shaving at 25 unworried about the waitress who will notice, who will tell my husband who will tell me, “they” talk about unshaved armpits. Haslam is the woman. Woman has always been judged. It wasn’t shame exactly nor exactly fear but some male threat Haslam felt: when her hair was too short a man followed her in to the John. He did nothing. He didn’t know. Haslam girl woman pudgy twelve boy bad cut just twelve. Not-Haslam said her brothers teased. I remember she said “on the rag.” Haslam and the Family Picnic Haslam afraid of the razor Haslam brave Haslam coward shaves for the first time then for a dozen years. Haslam decides in 1990 your ideas are stupid, that shaving is a social construct. Haslam advertises for the O shape of their lips. None of this the least related to sex.
H.L. Johnson has been writing for enough years to come into her full voice. She is the founder and driving force of a small bi-annual reading series. Her manuscript-in-progress The Scurrilous Notebooks includes these and other poems. Johnson, a feminist activist, is the behind-the-scenes presence on several public social media pages and is actively involved in raising money for redistribution to women in crisis.
Monthly Editor Melissa Fite Johnson’s first collection, While the Kettle’s On (Little Balkans Press, 2015), won the Nelson Poetry Book Award and is a Kansas Notable Book. She is also the author of A Crooked Door Cut into the Sky, winner of the 2017 Vella Chapbook Award (Paper Nautilus Press, 2018). Her poems have appeared in Valparaiso Poetry Review, Broadsided Press, Whale Road Review, and elsewhere. Melissa teaches English and lives with her husband and dogs in Lawrence, Kansas.
The Coop: A Poetry Cooperative 
I love this poem. It’s complex and slmple at the same time. This takes me to the time I was on a womens e-mail group. The subject of shaving came up, and one of the women said she liked the feel of the hair on her legs. What a freeing thing to read.