Jalynn Harris
Summer 2023 | Poetry
Hair
How can a piece of my body fallen quietly
look like ash or a car spun
out on a highway or like those bugs
I played with as a child—
my touch enough to coil
the tiny black creature in on itself.
(back then, I was always playing
in the dirt. And Ma let me. To her I’d bring bouquets
of rocks in shoe boxes and mud pies stuffed
with acorn fruit. Sometimes she’d even say a prayer
over those dandelion graveyards and we’d refill
the hole together. But when I asked her why I couldn’t
look like Jakira, why she wouldn’t let my hair burn as
straight as the letter “I” she swore to me the good hair
burn was a warning like most fires. lifting her wig like a lid
from the kettle, to show her button-smooth scalp.
Lynn Lynn, she’d say, these are not wires confused around
themselves. No, each strand is a page in a story
each afro is a library of books.)
Jalynn Harris is a writer, educator, and book designer from Baltimore. Her work can be found in Poets.org, The Best American Poetry 2022, Feminist Studies, The Hopkins Review, & elsewhere
Jalynn recommends The World Doesn't Require You by Rion Amilcar Scott, Nobody's Magic by Destiny O. Birdsong, and Jokes my Father never taught me by Rain Pryor