The first time my mother stood up
to my father, she got her hair permed.
He had told her not to, said it was
a waste of my hard-earned money.
My father tells me this story while crying.
He is softer now, a treadless tire.
My mother came home from the salon,
and I’ll be damned, if it didn’t look terrible.
It killed me, Sierra, I swear to God.
The perm, this first mutter
in a soundless room, the first swing of the bat
only to find the pinata is a real dog. My mother
cried for hours, didn’t speak for a week.
Now, thirty years later, I am a poet
and I am telling this story as if it were mine.
I am harvesting this splinter.
This embarrassing toothache.
I am making my father drag his temper out of storage
by the wrist. I am making my mother drive home
from the salon over and over and over.
to my father, she got her hair permed.
He had told her not to, said it was
a waste of my hard-earned money.
My father tells me this story while crying.
He is softer now, a treadless tire.
My mother came home from the salon,
and I’ll be damned, if it didn’t look terrible.
It killed me, Sierra, I swear to God.
The perm, this first mutter
in a soundless room, the first swing of the bat
only to find the pinata is a real dog. My mother
cried for hours, didn’t speak for a week.
Now, thirty years later, I am a poet
and I am telling this story as if it were mine.
I am harvesting this splinter.
This embarrassing toothache.
I am making my father drag his temper out of storage
by the wrist. I am making my mother drive home
from the salon over and over and over.
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