Fall 2007 / Spring 2008

The Barbershop

by Renée Ruderman

Her mother dropped her
at the red and blue pole.
The girl tiptoed inside
the stall of a shop
choked in after-shave,
cigar smoke and leather strops
hanging like rulers
from the immense chairs
bursting in silver circles
off the floor.

The pocked Italian barber
carried the wooden seat,
a mount he slapped to fit
the chair where she climbed;
then he snapped the cape
around her neck.
She wiggled, twisted,
trailed her curiosity
around the shop
where men shed
in scissor snips,
where beefy palms
slid lotion from spouts,
where men were cloaked
in funnels of black.

The scissors slashed
the air above her head
and the barber said,
“If you don't sit still,
I'll take you
in the back room
and shoot you.”

She saw a velvet curtain
bulge across the backroom
entry, the flashback
of a bullet, and then
the sweet smell of gunpowder.

Her bangs shaped
like a staircase,
she leapt off the chair,
skidding on shorn hair,
blinking like a sprung
convict, full of stories.