Louis drinks the tea, thinks
O true apothecary, thy drugs are quick. Quick
as the tonsuring blade at the scalp: nineteen years
of hair, rubbed in coconut oil and run through
with brush and finger, fallen to the temple floor.
The girl toed it like a dead thing (flash: the mutt, weeping-
wounded, that had dragged itself onto their doorstep,
had broken its own back in a fever, a bald baby
doll in its jaws, one eye stuck shut) briefly, and shivered
at the air splayed upon her head like a hand. The hair,
exiled princess--having been picked clean
of its former identity (marigold diadems, baths
of milk, slow-lowing cows) and given a new
one (frayed terry head bands, drugstore
shampoo, rats' tails asnarl on subway tracks)--bears
those royal pangs gladly, and receives
your eyes as a fact, for the hair is used
to such gazes, wound tight as they are with greed
and longing. Yet the hair retains
the lushness of a cane field, gives the impression
of teeming, of webbed feet or flocked snouts or nautilized
tongues, of humus or hive. It says, Mortal,
press your face to me and live,
or, pull me back, then die.
|
