The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Salt Body Shimmer by Aricka Foreman

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BLUE MAGIC

Equipped from the siege it takes detangling
a tender-headed child’s hair, mema arms herself

Thick-toothed comb parting fields of naps
Bushels of soft kink pulled through

rubber bands, roots grown into stalks, brown-
bound by metallic threaded black,

the click of two bright-marbled orbs Each
Saturday night we’d do this dance when

she had no room for my mother’s and my libretto:
our fussing, the rafter pitch of my wail

Just right of her reach, a thin yellow promise
to pop my balled-up fists should I think

of breaking loose A thunderhead after washing,
drops of conditioner-thick water plump tufts

of crowded strands She pulled the plaits tight,
slathered my raw scalp with Blue Magic

Phyllis sings When I Give My Love (This Time)
I’m gonna make it last forever And perhaps

this too is how I’m wrought, the steel of being
beautiful: tears for what hands can do: wrangled

wild rind corkscrewed from the fruit, making
my grandfather’s line repent but O those wayward

vines of riverine: the devil is a lie: in the name
of hot-combs, hair picks, bobby pins and satin scarves

I wonder if my mother saw herself in the schoolyard
as I smoothed down the feral edges of my hair watching

some brilliant black boy backflip across the grass.
In the morning mirror, gel on the bristles of a slender

brush, I scooped the baby hairs along my temple
into shells We drove down 7 Mile singing

Anita Baker, too early for all that heartbreak
I must have refused her kiss at least once at drop-

off At least once she must’ve squinted with worry
at my newfound love for adornment Her knuckles

white as she pulled away I don’t remember looking back

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