The Hot Comb’s Hickey
By Cherene Sherrard (’01)

Iron swaddled with a burnt green rag
set aside for just this purpose.

Dax tar seeps over held ears, smoking fingernails.
The youngest grandbaby has to wait for elder cousins to go first.

Imagines hair so slick and straight it will only last one week,
curls thick and fat as Farina’s braids,

sits impatient on the plastic couch, wet hair drying, afraid of scissors.
After, Nana will pick collards, rinse away the sand, soak the leaves.

Tang-taste of greens will soothe the Vaseline-coated, crescent singe on her brow:
her own fault for fidgeting as the teeth pull her hair lean.

Told stories by Nana about a gal too timid for country living,
scared of the smoke-dark woods round Caddo parish,

sent to town to live with her Aunt, where
boy cousins played rough left bruises on her seal brown skin.

Nana pauses her tale to catch hold of her grandbaby’s wrist,
twists, as the child reaches for a taste of hot water cornbread:

an endangered recipe. Scolds, don’t ruin supper, sit down,
and let me finish, your hair.

Copyright © Cherene Sherrard. All rights reserved. Used with permission of the author.

Cherene Sherrard was born in Los Angeles, California in 1973. She has lived in New York and Atlanta, but now resides in Madison where she teaches African American literature at the University of Wisconsin. In 2000, she earned her PhD in English at Cornell University. Her poetry and prose has been published in several journals including Obsidian II: Black Literature in Review. The summer of 2001 was her first year at Cave Canem. She is currently working on a novel entitled Yard Girl and a poetry manuscript entitled Finger Prints. She's married to Amaud Johnson, another Cave Canem poet, and has a Siamese cat named Coco.

Copyright © 1997-2001 by Cave Canem Foundation, Inc.

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