Gold Medal Hair, poem by Stephanie Han (MY MANE MEMORIES Poetry and Prose Series)

Gold Medal Hair
by Stephanie Han

In 1976, beauty eludes.
Gold wire-rim glasses fastened with masking tape snipped and twisted by my father.
A toothy fence before the magic wand of wires.
Hair in need of a wash.
Height, a desperate illusion.

I flip pages of Mom’s Ladies Home Journal:
“Can this marriage be saved?”
How to deal with a diabetic, depressed,
overweight, underweight, alcoholic, unfaithful,
unemployed, drug-using husband.

How-to-handle a problem child, a child with cancer,
a child prodigy, a child with a birth defect,
a child with ESP powers, a bedwetting child.
Nothing about me: the average child.

Coupon-cutting, tall/short, wide-hipped/slim-hipped fashion tips, heroic pets, holiday diets.
A summer tale: centerfold romance rekindled/forbidden/almost-lost love.
A cabin on a lake that stills the sky.
I’ve never been to a cabin: I am 10 years old.

Hairstyles: The Dorothy Hamill Wedge!
Rich chestnut hair that fans as Dorothy
spins and twirls, a blur on black-and-white TV.

A hairstylist from church: My first trip
to a beauty parlor. I’m her first wedge.
Hair falls to the floor. Locks gone.
Free to be America’s sweetheart.
The will to beauty. I am ready for glory.

The next day at school I swing my head,
an American sweetheart with a Dorothy Hamill wedge.
The teacher compliments me.
The boys ignore me.
My second best friend says, you look like a boy.
My best friend says, don’t worry, hair grows.
My third best friend says, short hair is tomboyish and really good for sports, didn’t you sign up for softball team?

Gold medals are hard to win.

PHOTO: Nineteen-year-old Dorothy Hamill sporting her famous wedge haircut at the 1976 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria, where she won a gold medal for ice skating.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This poem inspired another one about my first perm. I tend to get new hairstyles during extreme times: personal turbulence or boredom.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Stephanie Han is a fourth generation Korean American writer and the sole finalist for the 2015 AWP Grace Paley Fiction Prize. Her poetry, fiction, and literary criticism have been widely anthologized and she has published in journals including the Louisville Review, Kyoto Journal, Nimrod International Literary Journal, and others. Her short fiction collection is forthcoming in 2016. She resides in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Threads by Linda Jackson Collins (THOUGHTS ABOUT THE EARTH Series)

Threads
by Linda Jackson Collins

On the way to my mailbox, I glimpse
my neighbor heading toward his.
He’s shoeless and shirtless, sunshine
beaming off his pale, silver-haired chest and
wrinkled, white shorts – real shorts, not
boxers, thank God. There’s no reason
he shouldn’t be undressed like this
in his own driveway but still I’m shocked,
having only ever seen him wearing
super-person clothes such as surgical scrubs
or full-dress blues. It’s only now I realize
how I’d taken comfort in his sturdy,
next-door competence, presuming
that a man who sews people up,
who “sustained forward presence,”
could save everyone around.
That’s a lot to put on a guy, I know,
and now I’m feeling queasy like I do
when I consider all those Suits seated
in Glasgow, quibbling over words
and degrees and dollars and gasses,
when what I want to know is: who’s
going to make sure no more polar bears
float adrift on iceberg chunks? Who will splice
live coral fragments onto dying reefs?
It won’t be Boris or John or Ursula or
Felix in their tailored jackets and
button-down shirts. Maybe Greta,
if only they’d put her in charge.
But she, slight of build, long of braid,
in her t-shirt and jeans,
isn’t dressed to kill.
*****
REFERENCES: Boris Johnson (UK Prime Minister), John Kerry (US Climate Envoy), Ursula von der Leyen (EU Commission President), Felix Tshisekedi (Congolese President), Greta Thunberg (Environmental Activist, Sweden).

PAINTING: High Society (Le Beau Monde) by René Magritte (1962).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Recently, I have been enjoying poems in which quotidian scenes blossom into serious themes. I wanted to try that technique myself using a conversational style while, I hope, capturing the vulnerability many of us feel at what seems like slow or no international progress fending off environmental crises.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Linda Jackson Collins has been writing and editing in the Sacramento community for over 10 years. She is a five-time editor of the Sacramento Poetry Center’s journal, Tule Review, and participates in various writing groups and workshops. Her collection, Painting Trees, published by Random Lane Press, won the Gold Medal in poetry from Northern California Publishers and Authors (NCPA) in its 2019 contest. In addition, she has had individual poems published in numerous literary journals, including Silver Birch Press. Visit her at ljcreviews.com.