|
|
Marc B. Adin
Read All About It
I was sitting in the barbershop
in my white tee shirt and green shorts,
waiting my turn
on the sticky tan naugahyde chair.
I was a scrawny ten year old kid
who wanted the perfect flattop
that would stay just the length
John the Barber did it that day.
If any barber could do it, John could.
It never seemed to work out that way, though,
to my discontent.
So, every other Saturday afternoon
you’d find me at The Barbershop.
John's Barbershop.
My father thought I was vain for a ten year old,
but he just didn't understand what a perfect flattop meant to me.
I was looking at June's
"Sports Illustrated" and the pictures of guns,
as I smelled the exotic perfumed Reynaud's French Talc
,
which always hung like the finest mist in the air.
I loved it there.
I felt like a man.
I looked up
to check the progress
of the haircut of the guy ahead of me
in John’s one barber chair,
full of excitement and barely contained glee.
I was going to be the next
to hop up for my cool, perfect cut.
I noticed he was not getting a flattop.
My turn next.
Yeah.
Suddenly, the man in the chair
burst into a brilliant white fire.
It was so white hot I could not see.
I was blinded for a minute or so,
everything looked like a black-blue
outline of the man in the barber chair.
I blinked and blinked and blinked
and through teary eyes kept seeing
the outline, no matter how I turned my head.
It started to go away and then
I stared at the chair, unable to move,
scared and confused.
There was just the
barber’s sheet and a pile of gray ashes
on the dark maroon seat
where a moment ago
a man was getting a haircut.
It was the weirdest thing I have ever seen.
Ever.
"Spontaneous Combustion,"
the newspapers called it.
I saw it happen.
The barber’s sheet wasn't burned,
nor the little tissue paper
John would roll around
everyone's neck.
I often think about
that moment when I was a kid,
just waiting for a perfect flattop
on a Saturday afternoon.
Maybe the real things
Which will happen
in the world that awaits us
are revealed to kids,
in a barbershop,
on a lazy hot summer afternoon.
Want to respond to this poem? Do it here!
Return to Poetry
|
|
|
|
