My hairdresser my salonist my sweet Mariah drops the f bomb while mixing my color drops the spatula dabs my forehead to keep the dye from dying on the wall’s a strawberry plant both budding and fruiting a pearly everlasting like getting my hair back to a shade of black it’s never been I’m a beagle of eavesdropping on the clientele They met at Walter Payton 1600 on the SAT a peony that’s always pink a lily that never keels over in the pre-rain October near the gated community where they joke about the ice age my darling Mariah explaining how I need to use more product bow my head and shake it to lessen the frizz says she left her man when he told her Your entire life is a complaint says when he said it she asked him to say it again say it so I know I can leave you the one getting her silvers clipped says there hasn’t been a storm like this since 1935 when it took out the Last Train to Paradise & wouldn’t we all love to be raising a Line 39 to the gators that live to be a hundred last call for a ride from NYC to the Keys for a blowout a blowjob a blousy hurray for Mariah who tells me she might at 57 be starting a new life
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Martha Silano is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Gravity Assist (Saturnalia Books, 2019). Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Paris Review, American Poetry Review, and The Best American Poetry series, among others. Martha teaches at Bellevue College.