Saw Palmettos

Saw palmetto is a plant native to Florida and the coastal plains of the southern United States. This plant is often used as an herbal remedy to prevent testosterone from converting into DHT, a hormone that leads to hair loss. Saw Palmettos is a meditation on transition. Each glass bottle represents an empty vial of saw palmetto tincture that author Charles Theonia rubbed into the roots of their hair every day after taking a shower while on hormone replacement therapy with testosterone. Theonia would let the tincture sit on their head for fifteen minutes and used that time to write. Theonia describes the experience on Container’s website: “As I wrote, inhabiting the inherently-funny, embodied moment of sitting still, dripping wet, and trying not to worry about balding, I noticed that I was focused less on depicting particular stories and scenes in time, and more on questions and uncertainties that lingered unresolved. The poems were tracing anxiety and disconnection not back to their sources, where I could potentially understand and contain them, but through to what comes next.” Inside each bottle is a poem written during those fifteen minutes of waiting. Created by Container, Saw Palmettos was built in a closed edition of 25 copies.

Charles Theonia. Saw Palmettos. Baltimore: Container, 2018.