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Pardon my appearance
The Hyacinth Review
The Hyacinth Review

Pardon my appearance

by
September 19, 2026
Interloper, Michael Toti, 2026

Arlene Demaris is a poet and freelance writer. Born in…

The following piece is paired with Michael Toti’s Interloper.

While I’m under destruction, paper bag over my head marked with stains that could indicate spoilage, or the greasy work of renovation now in progress. Onlookers want to look away—can’t but gasp as my crone emerges, assembling herself out of the shed skin of history. I could be at my first wedding, stiff white flowers sprouting from my head, smiling at the wrong man. Or I could be at my second wedding, in a boat on the lake with my one true fisherman, my submariner, alongside us a snapper raising its fist of a skull in joy through deep murk, yellow perch in its jaws an auspice. Three days after, the towers could have stood fast instead of going down in flames. Under destruction. Floors peeling away. Memos and memos flying for blocks. The war could have stopped in its tracks for lack of weapons, embarrassed. Meanwhile, near the dock, our boat still decked in flowers. Who is talking now? The making or the unmaking? Oh, the ways I have changed, the girl growing out of me. My open casket holds a stranger dressed for the prom, blank place for a face, a small engraved card reading, arrange your head here. And I laugh. Is that a sin?

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Arlene Demaris is a poet and freelance writer. Born in Plainfield, New Jersey, she now lives in Avon, Connecticut, with her husband, Michael, and two cats. Her poetry has appeared in Maine Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Radar Poetry, Connecticut River Review, Naugatuck River Review, and other publications, and is forthcoming in Bellevue Literary Review and Bear Review (Spring 2026). She received a 2024 Connecticut Poetry Award (first place) and a 2023 Nutmeg Poetry Award (third place) from the Connecticut Poetry Society, of which she is a member. Additionally, she was a finalist for the 2025 Missouri Review Editors’ Prize and Bear Review’s 2026 Michelle Boisseau Prize, and a semifinalist for Grid Books’ 2025 Off the Grid Prize. She holds an MFA in Writing & Literature from Bennington College (2024) and is currently working on her debut full-length collection, Instructions for Use, as well as a chapbook, An Afternoon of Uncertain Pleasures.

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