Postscript Culture of Head Wraps
 

Her knuckles exasperated, my aunt
as dead as Deirdre cried for a washboard, 
it had been too long since the last difficult scrub
 
through which she gauged conversion, responses 
to the fear of bleach to which she’d become immune
 
so did not whiten, did not match her rest home cook’s
uniform like her sister Maid’s and her sister LPN’s
 
all beaten by Black Muslim women on Superior Avenue
where we were too, without the centerpiece
 
that makes a difference, especially since it sits atop
Black Muslim female heads like a linen pyramid or
sphinx.  
 

Her knuckles exasperated, my hand squeezed
into its own exasperation, we walked through
 
all that Muslim whitewater on Superior, through all that white-
capped spun flax sea of hospitality and urgency of nurses
 
everywhere, superior treatment of that location, though
whiteheads are also pimple eruption when sebaceous glands
 
are blocked.  I wasn’t pulled into the sea that could have 
claimed, that must have parted as women aren’t navigable
unless they move or are moved, and I was no force, still
 
am not ready to wrestle with Soft as Silk and Swan’s Down
cake flour, boxes of contenders ten years in the cupboard
 
waiting for attempt at scratch, probably full of webs, pontoons,
temporary ropes in the ring, towel thrown over the head
 
to let dough rest, just to be let near a sanctuary, to blend in 
with immaculate covering of civil unrest in facilities of praise, 
white head wraps kicking back 
 
any light hitting them, these white heads also frosted 
bay windows, conspicuous on the street, a recess
 
inside where the personal sits; if allowed
to happen, the cake can still be cake, the rise
 
not necessarily compromised if webbed flour
turns out layers of lace, a more patterned cake,
 
structure less that of foam, more that of washboard
also present in magnification of linen’s tight white weave.
 

*From the upcoming collection, Tokyo Butter (Persea, 2005).