ManicDDaily

I wrote the draft poem below for Tess Kincaid’s Magpie Tales, where Tess posts a weekly photo prompt.  This week, I’ve really just used Tess’s photo as a springboard;  my drawing and poem are not meant as direct interpretations.

Chocolate/Blonde Hair

I.

Some people have a real hankering
for long blonde hair.
Do you really think
there would be a certain overrated
chocolate chain,
if Lady Godiva
had paraded atop her nag
with a short shag?

II.

“You can’t get that out of a bottle,” strangers would
say about my hair as a kid, when it was
long and straight and naturally
blonde.  Dyed hair, my mother
declared was blocky, all one
shoddy shade, nothing that could even compare
with what I grew, and so, for a while,
I felt a certain halo, until growing
tired of halos, I
insisted on hair cut short, though because
it was my hair,
collected the swathes in
a small and dark brown
box, which both amazed and
hurt me, for what had felt so long
(for so long) and golden, had spun down
to a handful of softish straw.

When I looked in the mirror,
what I saw there too was
diminished, not the sly pixie,
but a confused Delilah,
shorn by mistake,
whose face was round and
who didn’t even have the name
right.

III.

You can’t get that out of
a chocolate– 

a memory:
tobogganing, the sky turning lavender above
tracked speed, as if
we were a flexibly flying flame
amidst the drifts, and below the
blur of snow-flaked lashes, everyone’s
skin shone, till legs trudged (toes urging faster),
to get to the burnish of gas-fired
stove, pot of milk, melt–

a taste:
it was Colombian chocolate, cut in squares
sprinkled with brown sugar, leaving a trace
of smoke in the throat, the kind of smoke that, bluish, always
carries dawn or dusk as it slinks down
steep altitudes;

a friend:
she was my best, and on different visit, when the wind
chilled and I’d had to wear some older sister’s old beau’s sweater
and thick shoes, she’d laughed at my discomfiture, till I learned not to care
about such things for a short
while–truly not at all–the look of them–not
once she re-filled my cup.

(As always, all rights reserved.  Sorry this so long–a draft!)