The twenty stories in The Haircut prove that Dana Gorbea-Leon can do practically anything with words. Any other writer-magician would pull the proverbial rabbit out of his hat. This writer-magician draws a talking cat, a serial killer, a man obsessed with Hemingway, a bloviating troll, a shoeless toad, and one or two ordinary folk out of his hat. And what a hat it is. Think of Yeats' Words for Music Perhaps & Other Poems. Ditch the perhaps. Skip the poems (although not the poetry). Concentrate on the words, surprising, ambitious, over-the-top, the music in the words, haunting, lonesome, lush. There's lots of humor here, too, highbrow, low, deadpan, droll. Come for the words, stay for the music. Laugh a little (or a lot), the rabbit is about to perform.