Lieu de Coiffure Mémoire
       

                    Fireproof pious rumor, precious fume
of composure with your furious romp
                    and rump furioso, you can arrange
everything except the letter
                    D, disappeared, from the shop sign
in Paris: Coiffure pour  ames.
                    Apparently, even the souls of
the dead feel better with a new
                    hairstyle, so in the fourteenth-century
vellum illumination of Dante's Wood
                    of the Suicides, the harpies show up
in red stockings, blue wings, and perfect
                    hairdos like that of Le Corbusier's Notre Dame
du Haut, set to outlast the winds
                    of Ronchamp. Although pouf and pumice
smooth the furor, memory's slow-burning
                    fuse still arrives at the Do or Dye
Salon. Samuel Sewall, the only judge
                    in the Salem witchcraft trials to ever
publicly admit his mistake, wrote
                    in his diary that "God has ordained
our hair as a test to see whether
                    we will submit to his will or insist
on our own." In her 50s
                    my mother began to wear
wigs. Now look what the cat
                    dragged in when he found them perched
on their styrofoam stumps, wings
                    flipped up to the sky.

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Copyright © 2019 Angie Estes All rights reserved
from The Manhattan Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission