2 Pieces

Joshua Peter, United States

A Chronicle of $9 Haircuts

Tell me, won’t you, of vinyl waiting chairs

and herbal supplements, piled a mile high

on a dedicated salon table,

Al Punto con Jorge Ramos

blaring on the sole television;

they swelter all the same in Houston heat,

heat like the ají amarillo

tucked away in Margarita's lunch kit.

Here, in rough-around-the-edges Kingsway,

where smooth asphalt yields to

cracked concrete and tired stucco façades,

father and son have visited with regularity

for the better part of eight years

because where else would two haircuts

cost a trifling 18 dollars in this economy?

Margarita wouldn’t understand if the boy

asked for a tapered crop with a long top:

such trivial jargon was beneath her master craft

of intuitively lancing away the excess,

reshaping identities under beveled razor's edge,

of dos en los lados and tijeras por encima, por favor,

of water spritzings and gentle touslings:

there was no magic in the movements of her hands,

only loving deliberation as she took care

to avoid the pimples framing his hairline

and almost maternally coiffed his hair with gel,

even when he didn't ask for it

(she knew how he liked to shine);

Sore thumbs they were, brown father and son,

but always made to feel like they belonged.

These Labors of Love

A baker house in Quail Valley

spreads out its coveted wares daily at 5 AM,

As cold dew still glazes hardy

St. Augustine grass, patchy and sun-burnt,

And pavement is dampened only by streetlamp light;

fresh, elastic, puffed—the proof is in the pudding

(and jelly) that engorges those godly pillows,

the Chappell Hill sausage that fills their croissants.

She stands ready at the counter, opening come

hell or high water, hurricane or heat wave,

under the watchful eye of her gilded buddha:

all of Hoover's rugged individualism

with none of the self-righteous entitlement--

humble paragon of the American dream,

she dishes out steaming microwaved servings

of it, maple-kissed old-fashioneds

chocolate-filled long johns,

boudin kolaches fragrant with thyme,

yeast-risen reminders of the noum kong

the refugee generations before her consumed

in a Cambodia that spurned them.

The shop and its oldest patrons

are testaments to tenacity alike:

Men with cowboy hats leveled with their eyebrows

consider the honest day's work ahead of them

in their mirrored reflections over fragrant coffee

and the fluttering tones of Khmer folk songs;

men who still tuck their tartan button-ups in the old way,

following the gig line to between their dusty steel-toed boots.

They linger longer than most; a boy takes notice.

In Spanish, she warmly bids them farewell.

University of Houston freshman Joshua Peter thinks of himself as a wren: unassuming, nondescript—a wallflower. He, much like the humble bird, enjoys exploring and observing. A purveyor of several expensive hobbies including dip-pen calligraphy, specialty tea/coffee, and dog-rearing, he is currently trying his hand at wet shaving.