Cutting Hair

By Minnie Bruce Pratt b. 1946 Minnie Bruce Pratt

She pays attention to the hair, not her fingers, and cuts herself

once or twice a day. Doesn’t notice anymore, just if the blood

starts flowing. Says, Excuse me, to the customer and walks away

for a band-aid. Same spot on the middle finger over and over,

raised like a callus. Also the nicks where she snips between

her fingers, the torn webbing. Also spider veins on her legs now,

so ugly, though she sits in a chair for half of each cut, rolls around

from side to side. At night in the winter she sleeps in white

cotton gloves, Neosporin on the cuts, vitamin E, then heavy

lotion. All night, for weeks, her white hands lie clothed like

those of a young girl going to her first party. Sleeping alone,

she opens and closes her long scissors and the hair falls under

her hands. It’s a good living, kind of like an undertaker,

the people keep coming, and the hair, shoulder length, French

twist, braids. Someone has to cut it. At the end she whisks

and talcums my neck. Only then can I bend and see my hair,

how it covers the floor, curls and clippings of brown and silver,

how it shines like a field of scythed hay beneath my feet.

Biography

Minnie Bruce Pratt is recognized as an eminent poet in the United States. In addition to receiving acclaim for her verse, Pratt is acknowledged as an essayist, activist, lesbian-feminist, and educator. By chronicling her existence in poetry and prose, Pratt has explored themes reflecting the particularities of her life. She has surveyed her Southern, middle-class upbringing, her ten-year marriage and strained divorce, her battle . . .

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