Salon Glare

yellow strips like barley sheaves dry and split loop with umber bangs lashings of auburn kiss-curls raven cowlicks and silver manes severed but twisting tangling alive like snakes

hands spindly work transformative rituals of braiding dying slicing reconstructing heads with eyeballs gently covered by cucumber slices lips caressed smoothed by beeswax gloss honey-chi flavoured skin replenishing below thick creams and scrubs of apricot and oatmeal

this is a moment a fragment within a continuum of shifting remakings the specifics have changed through time but the significations and the practices remain the same beauty respectability access power desire at the core of rituals within salons

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dressing for this adventure you’d donned a hat to hide the regrowth the frizz the fluff the out of fashion style and decided your appearance was acceptable agreeable but now surrounded by dozens of yourself distorted in carnival mirrors you wonder ‘where’d you get that getup?’ the receptionist twirls the phone cord scribbling into appointment books while you wait in front of her reimagining yourself as you are framed here: nose small and neat? bulbous! pores clear? oil wells oozing! wrinkles great cliffs and black pits below your eyes bulging fat pockets poking out in clothes poorly fitting and faded

you are on display splayed open stripped each vulgarity highlighted in lights bright later when you’ve been reworked she may dim the uglifiers meanwhile however I dare you to meet your own eyes in the mirror as Kitty escorts you to your seat…

now what is it that you want from her? a tidy up? a trim? a reinvention? upon departing who is it you want to be?
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bleached blondes dolled up dulled out you’re one of them might be in fifteen minutes after the ticker has chimed and it’s time to wash your mop in the cold porcelain bowl find yourself blind from neck spasms chemicals bedazzle of beautician wit and the gloss of today’s spectacular outfit

you could get your fingernails done or a pedicure but would you put those bunioned feet on parade? Festy foot stinking skin flaking we can all see your tinea!

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remembering Laura Palmer head wrapped in plastic treatment healing your dry ends but also trickling slowly into your left ear muffled sounds from the apprentice seep in and itch: something about Jo Mark Spiro Jin sister’s boyfriend cousin’s brother guy next door is a creep and mother is pressuring her to get married and squeeze out the grandkids all he wants to do is meet some sweet guy and settle down the whole white picket fence and a dog and some daffodils bored with that just wants to do the scene the whole glitter and glam shrug off the breeder mentality you know always wanted to travel visit the Taj Mahal Milan Mozambique Alcatraz anywhere that sounds exotic even if it is a prison

better just to close your eyes pretend you’re asleep hope you don’t walk out with a mohawk