My Mother's Rollers 
Before bed, you dress your head
with rollers
the size of Campbell soup cans,
silver plastic gripping Clairol Sunlit Brown
hair that will not straighten. You are
newly wed and
quelling waves
that you tangled into braids as a child,
summer-striped blonde and ash sand tipped
with rubber
bands. They grazed your shoulders
like frayed paintbrushes, almost dipping into
mud puddles on Pitkin Avenue, East New York, as you
crouched on
elbows and knees on the sidewalk,
to play Skelzy�to flick
aluminum bottle caps heavy with melted crayon.
Dusk
congested the ghetto
and you skipped
to the Protestant church across the street
for Girls�
Night
where you learned to sew
and, on Sunday evenings,
crashed
services for the cake
at the reception afterwards. Later,
you stalked stars like crumpled candy wrappers,
past the
junkyard�where you'd scrape knees
on tires piled like a sierra, overlooking
vegetable vendors and jelly apple wagons
lining
Georgia Avenue�to the green couch
of your apartment house.
In Acapulco, on your honeymoon,
the lamplight
in your hotel room catches the metallic hue
of the rollers and he complains, grieves
the time your hair demands, the hours
the rollers
keep you from the bed
until you cut it all off for him.
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