SoMa Literary Review - On the Street

On the Street

By Jan Steckel

One of the weirdnesses of East Oakland living:

hanks of long straight black hair on the sidewalk,

as if the Virgin of Guadeloupe had manifested,

and then vanished in a puff of holy smoke,

leaving only her tresses as a relic.

Hair extensions detach from people constantly.

Do they just fall off after a while? If so,

there's a real market opportunity for

an improved hair extension adhesive.

Maybe they're yanked off in catfights,

which would explain the single high-heeled pump

I saw this morning in the middle of the street.

Imagine two transvestites fighting over a handbag.

One rips out the other's hair extensions.

The bald transvestite falls back into the gutter,

takes off a size ten shoe, hurls it at the other's head.

A siren sounds. They run away.

Everything makes sense to me now.

Also by Jan Steckel on SoMa Literary Review:

The Necropolis Next Door, The Gold Club, Performance Anxiety, Charity After the Hurricane, Getting Slammed & 35^th Avenue Ladybug

Oakland writer and performance poet Jan Steckel’s work has also appeared in Margin, Lodestar Quarterly, BiMagazine, The Pedestal Magazine. She is the author of The Underwater Hospital.