AT THE SALON

Magazine pages filled with products to volumize,

customize, hydrolosize, defrizz.

Almost as any pages as are devoted

to organizing the closet that stores the bottles

and pumps and tubes of promise.

The stylist runs her fingers through my shampooed hair

and sighs.

She sprays, scrunches and plasters strands

to cover balding spots, brushes tint along roots.

The salon is an old barbershop,

chairs and mirrors rearranged to accommodate either sex.

The stylist’s hair is a long stream

of sienna red sunset,

naturally curly, a calm cascade of light and shimmer.

I sit under the dryer and stare at boxes

filled with siren calls to men who respond

to “rowdy red”, “audacious auburn” and

many variations of golden sun.

When dryer clicks to off

and the last of the holding sprays fogs the air,

the mirror reflects the me

that walked in,

no shimmer, no volume, no siren call.

I put the magazine back

and go home to organize my medicine chest.

THE COOKIE

It was just a cookie,

a careless, erose glob,

harmlessly stuck to

a rusty car hood.

I wanted the cookie,

like an achy itch

left by a swarm

of unending desire.

I wanted the cookie,

its uneasy roundness melting

the taste of last night’s

lemon peels, toasting

it into chocolate ice cubes.

Aroma wafted to full head of steam

as the car rose from stupor,

gears shifting into first

second

third

taking the cookie away

away to a salted caramel

marsh in the desert.

I plunged into the mirage

pulled the clouds of fluff

around me like a clock

ticking so loudly that time

burned the bottom of the cookie

I just wanted the cookie.