Her hair is a rat's nest so her mother-words told her. Mother words, the first food in the mirror of self.

Poor little Goldilocks for her Jewish hair is kinky, is frizzy and full of snarls- needs tending.

Christian hair is straight, also silky-shiny-long and on all the shampoo bottles- a picture that tells us so. Easy to comb, fingers run through it with ease, soft they coo- also vampire hair, Rockstar hair all the super powers have hair that waves a flag, amber waves- an endless field.

She spent so much time straightening hair she didn't have a chance to hone in on her ancestors. All the wildfire of coiled ringlets bursting through the skull of fierce Hebrew women. The ones who put their babies in baskets to survive, to infiltrate pyramids to take over Egypt. The ones who didn't have time to let bread rise, those desert warriors were tracking the Promised Land, willing to eat unleavened bread instead.

Let your hair be thick as thieves, a weapon of temptation. a cause for alarm they said.

Downtown 1967 Kansas City mommy promised her a day out in the city. This girl whose world was backyard lizards and stray cats meow and brother moon waning. A fancy department store lunch- would there be french fries, a milkshake? And the shop windows seen from outside all dressed up with giant woman dolls, hand bags in a static dangle on wrists frozen in time pointing to some other world they would never belong to. There are black folks and cigarettes in white lady hands, there are lanes of traffic that require her to stop and look and look again before crossing the streets

And her first haircut.

Mother and girl enter the salon through revolving doors and oval mirrors, propped up on a phone book, getting a real good look at my evolution. Behind her stands a woman whose eyes are painted like a pharaoh, her hair straight as an arrow her mother would day and the colour of night time when the moon was shy.

She holds a pair of glass scissors that are encrusted with rubies, emeralds and diamonds. These are magic tools, thinks the girl whose hair has taken too much of mommy’s morning, more time for Brother Moon is needed since his head is hard to raise, his rolling over somehow impeded.

In her other hand is an unfurled scroll. The hair witch is looking right at the girl, in reverse through the mirror when she rolls out this never ending roll, like a serpent's tongue it writhes and the girl, whose hair has never been cut, sees two versions of her story.

The girl is mesmerised by her gold now green now rootbeer brown eye. Her own reflection in the gilded mirror as the spinning chair that goes up and down delays her notice of the plait being twined and centred along her spine by these two magic hands.

The rhythmic brushing of her strawberry blonde makes her sleepy, dreaming of mommy-time.

Weaving around and through, fingers behind her moving quickly, twisting her hair into submission. Twist twist tug twist twist tug when she suddenly feels the cold metal blades resting just for an instant on the back of her neck then a sound of two blades merging and poof!

Dandelion girl is born, fully awake and alone. Separated from her ancestors, her head separated from her body. Her Rapunzel rope lies dead on the fancy tiled floor in downtown Kansas City, a broom sweeps away the carcass when she sees mommy’s hand grab the lifeless coil.. She watches her wrap it in tissue and place it in her black leather handbag, the one with hard butterscotch candies and tubes of bright orange Avon lipstick.

Mommy knew this is how the day would go. She turns again towards the mirror and watches her hair once weighted with length that reached her tailbone ringlet upwards, weightless, lost.

That night she dreams of carrots planted in a field she’s never seen. They're pulled from the moist dark ground by hands and machines and thrown into baskets then trucks that are driven to a dark lonely cellar and sold to strangers.

She sees the carrots exchanged for gold and glass scissors encrusted with rubies, emeralds and diamonds. But then she hears the weeping of the lopped weeping greens with stainless steel scissors. Forgive me, she says

but we didn’t have time to sing to you as we pulled you from your mother, when we stole the sky from above you just as your green was feeding your raw roots swelling.

She kept dreaming as she grew, dug and wandered.

Always below the skin mask called the surface a dark skin a be afraid skin the smell of nanny's arms, cocoa butter, cinnamon, and something sharp that wakes up sleepy bears skin. Deep palms pink like mine, she says. God planted the same ground on which we all crawl blueberry popsicles at noon in July, my far away brother being diagnosed in Colorado. Me diagnosing her pink palms in Kansas. Our lips blue with sugar and ice alone with a cold dark river black and blue. Jump in. Death is a crack in the blue. You can live there. It's full of sound. A gospel of crows women moaning as the eggs of their grandmothers push through ocean cracks and canyons full of baskets full of berry stuffed and dough baked golden with pine wood fires in the backyard pools of bullies are trying to draw girl trust. Water metres. Table spot tears measured. Table salt sparkles of blue coming through upward spiralling blocks anti gravity hair dowsing rods, pulling free from demon hands and dying brothers below. There are snow dusted stones spattered with blood still steaming as her womb freezes shut. Onyx lair wounds that live in grandmother's eggs they need a telling. A mermaid tail swatting the calm surface of deep seas summer 1966 Rocky Mountains she's taller now must be older to a mama bear a black bear in a Yellowstone tree. Her three cubs climbing alongside her hundreds of cars stopped to feed the babies. When the Bough Breaks a baby will fall. tripping over the once wild ground of Montana I see a mother running she carries him counting the drops of blood left behind like breadcrumbs. The forest is too far from the road. Backyard bullies groping the wilderness dunking mermaids underwater over and over again. lips blue with unspoken truth. A long time passes before coming home lost in the forest of healthy children who feed on open bags of chips and meat sticks. Greasy with skin bone of broken animals will never pay homage to look up a flock of swans heading north to the Snow Queen. White Bison and Lynx Fox and pink eyed rabbits will follow tracks of blood rose water giving birth in the Widening Gyre spinning new tails tails of flame and of heat arising in the womb forest womb forest. Songs being sung by gentle men who catch the naked ones pushed free by warrior contractions. They are Joy carried to save layers of wear. white haired web weavers caress the eggs of the unborn on borns. Make sure to measure the wing years begin to double the count after the skin shrinks up the mole mats turning it into red rivers remember to feed the worms and wake with the apricot, crimson and black feathered rooster. There is a crack between things that stitch one egg to the other. The border edge where the shell walls are eaten until the worm is caught. Feed the last dogs whose ribs show on the side of the road you travel upon. It's late and my belly is full of cheese and red wine. I'm crying about all the shit hitting fans blades of every ilk screaming out of my tower screaming out of my tower. Be a blade be a blade like a lunatic Madonna searching for her garden of evolution revolution constitution written on hemp on stone on my lover's heart. I tossed down a thick long braid. There is roast chicken an iceberg lettuce with blue cheese waiting for me to eat with my fingers.

My belly heart full of unhatched eggs, a vase of roses from a city not yet realised filling the room with blossom do after lunch I jump into a crack and the blue death washes me clean. So I'm a dance with strangers. The dance of ashes with those who are lonelier than me. Kansas City 1966 Saturday, a date with mother the two of us inside the glass doors it spin around and around full of eggs, Rapunzel and Lady Godiva marrow and salt dark snakes dancing inside us waiting to be born we weave our hair into a tangle of Pallas mirrors clear and golden look. The future is behind you. Gaze into the uterine glass ball. Virgin locks braided down and into my spine. I sit upon the tail and swim deeper into the dark womb losing my anchor, becoming a

dandelion casting my seeds and every summer resurrecting golden yellow sapphires pure through navels navels eyes cut like diamonds with a humble view. The way a fly sees mountain ranges free from young and sexy green eyed winged and laughter full boy cuts and rub on young free to roam. A glacier fed river pouring through every tap a scalp bear and above the Timberline, feeling the sun and melting ice as one snow strands weave into Strawberry Fields, skin rough yet polished by sandstorms that were once a fertile crescent. Silence bolts that turn midnight into tie her into high noon. Touch her those living cells hiding under the coffin, white coffin lace, a reef that has no barrier Whistle While You Work free in a field of all that is home.