Beautiful Hair
by Marilyn Humbert
it’s a small salon
vying for customers
with Royals and Stylz
perms and foils of the mall
my favourite cutter
waves in recognition
she sports a new ’do
buzzed cut on the right
dyed blue on the left
I slip into a vacant chair
muffle-masked chatter
passes the time
the gentle tug of fingers
snipping and combing
in the mirror I watch
her eyes on the door
days are slower she tells me
scarcely enough work
to cover wages and rent
PHOTO: Quarantine haircut by Anamaria Mejia, used by permission.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: My poem, “Beautiful Hair,” prompted by a visit to my favorite hairdresser—usually a busy place buzzing with people and hairdressers. This has changed since Covid, and now there is a real threat that there may not be enough customers for this business to survive.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Marilyn Humbert lives in the Northern suburbs of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Her free-verse poems have been awarded prizes in competitions, published in Other Terrain Journal, Backstory, FemAsia Magazine, and The Blue Nib most recently. Her tanka and haiku appear in international and Australian journals, anthologies, and online.
Silver Birch Press 