Month: June 2023

I grasp this beast of kinky

curls that sits upon my head,

attempting to tame it into submission.

First, the wire brush stretching strands

straight as concentrated hot air

dry the water from the beast.

Slowly the taming comes.

Finally dry, frizz left there,

making me aware who the boss really is. 



I break out my next weapon 

against this frizzy beast:

The flat iron.

And while it heats,

I tune the speakers to a podcast

about the missing women of Juarez.

Sectioning my beast hair as I listen

about women missing,

women found dead,

women to whom no one paid attention 

because 

they were

women, girls

because

they were

brown

because 

they were

poor

women, girls

brown

poor—

The things 

that do not grab attention

that fade away in the media

easy to say of these—

They ran away.

They ran away with a boyfriend.

Oh, she’s a drug addict.  Who knows where she went?



And on I go to straighten another section

Of hair with my hot flat iron.

My beast neatly tamed.

I think it would be easier to braid my hair into rows.

Decorating the braids with small beads,

a bead for each missing woman,

a bead for each murdered woman,

a bead for each missing, murdered, indigenous woman of color

in this land, across the globe.

Each tiny bead 

with a name microscopically etched

and then braided into my hair

as beads of grief,

a bead for each woman, each girl—

If I could then even lift

my bead heavy head

like the mothers who carry

sandbags of grief searching

the world for daughters

gone missing—

what could I, one person, do?



The world spins on.

Despite the burden of beads,

these beads braided

into the fabric of motherhood

across the globe

for girls gone missing,

girls glanced at, ignored 

by a society that sends up invisible prayers

then turns forgetting what it deems valueless,

girls marked by the violence of poverty,





Then I think of 22 year old, Mahsa Amini.

dead in the twisted irony

of morality police custody for a hijab violation.

I should shave my head in solidarity 

with the women of Iran 

who protest.

But what could I, one person, do?



Would beads or a shaved head here make a difference?

Would anyone know the meaning?  

My neck cannot bear the weight of braids with beads enough for each woman.

My bald head would not be understood as sign of solidarity.



So I send out my chicken scratches of a poem

into the world, and I choose to leave it as it is, 

Untamed and ugly.