Para la Madre Diabólica

 She said that my hair

had turned the moon to ash

as if it were hers, a pet cat

mute in the silent sky.

What she meant was

that I had the wrong face

and the wrong voice, always

wandering from its glass case.

I slipped the crescent moon

through my hair like a garland,

then grew it long and wild,

my name at the root and the far ends.

________

for What's Going On? --"Hair"

Rapunzel's Hairdresser

Rapunzel's hairdresser was one lazy bitch,
with sporadic, unpredictable hours,
and a shop inconveniently located smack-dab center of a perpetual rain storm.
And so,
when contestant #15,383 said, "Great hair!"
and really meant "How desperate are you to be seen, 
complimented,
valued,
loved?" and, more to the point, 
"Are you willing to fuck me to get it?" 
Poor Rappy lost her shit right there in the coffee bar. 

It's hard, if you've never tried it, 
to saw off ten years' growth with a plastic knife meant for
spreading cream cheese with,
but our Raps found herself filled with Messianic vigor, 
and, too, her cause was flat-out righteous.
Have you ever seen a perfectly normal girl with really unbelievably long hair
arch her back and hiss? 
Here was your chance,
and pity if you missed it.

Her girlfriends call her "Berry", which started as
Rappy, then Rappy Raspberry, then just Berry.
Now they say,
"Lookit YOU, sugar!" and rise out of their mid-afternoon drowse
and make all appropriate noises one makes about a girl with a fresh style.
So, when contestant #15,384 asked if she was a dyke,
out of jealousy or fear of female power or 
by way of eliciting a shame response or something,
she was Teflon,
she was made of gold,
gloriously side-shaved and in the moment,
too cool for fools and he walked out, hands in pockets,
back to his wife and the 
apartment above the empty shop in the never-ending rain storm.
And our Berry?
She does her own hair now. Word.
_________

for Camera FLASH!

 

Dream Interpretation

It is necessary to have long hair in Fall.

I speak only for myself, of course...

You may present your head to the shears or join the circus--

That is none of my concern.



In the Autumn, long hair pleases me.

It is like cat's whiskers, or an old Arizona telegraph line--

It sends itself out on the air as I close my eyes, hugging myself through my sweater,

And it tells me what the breeze has been dreaming.

_______