The pressing toilet-comb a mother's voice its furious breath.

The pressing toilet-comb a mother's voice

its furious breath.

The scorching guilt of having

a daughter that nothing will straighten.

further she tries,

a mother always tries, taking

her daughter's life in her teeth

applying love's heavy grease,

its thick pomade, pulling

hard against frail roots

Mothers and daughters twisted

as bad births or bad hair,

reverting, emotions turning

back, huged womb and womb.

A mother's voice a pressing comb

a mother's tongue, like impetuous iron,

singing of worthy hair and good daughters.

Its hissing disappointment,

the offensive odor of feathered desire,

and vapor rising

from a daughter's scalp.

Color

My mother taught me to color.

Her first lesson:

to possess the crayon in small fingers,

to stir it round, around in small circles.

The way color actuates always in circles,

itself, itself, itself: always

coming back to the beginning.

inferior lesson:

how to match them.

The darks and lights for washing,

the careful separation--lest they bleed

I understand segregation, the space between black and white.

Third lesson:

none color outside the line,

outside the boundaries where color

does not belong, making something larger,

changing its definition.

My mother colored everything, neatly.

I base it hard, at first,

this deconstruction: what is apple

or not apple? forward what side

of the line do things begin?

Self-portraits require boundaries;

to such a degree do colors. Colors need spaces where things are

brown or black. I understood color,

on the other hand could not do it.

Always a certain number of color skipped across the line,

as if escape were possible, as if

in space it could find

something more.

Janice N Harrington is a librarian and professional storyteller who lives in Champaign, Illinois. Her story 'The Devil's Dulcimer' appears in Talk That Talk: An Anthology of African-American Storytelling.

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