after The Kitchen Table Series: Untitled (Woman Brushing Hair)
                                Carrie Mae Weems

I could guide your eye over the planes 
of the photograph: the clean butcher block 
table sheened under the pendant light—
or the shadow thrown onto the wall, 
the jar of hair grease, the two glasses 
of wine perpendicular to it, 
or the two packs of Camel cigarettes 
parallel. A fiction of geometry. 

Imagine instead, as I do, the feel 
of another woman’s head beneath 
your hands. You are tending her, brushing
her hair. You smell bergamot, tobacco, 
her sweet talcum scent. You cannot see it, 
but her eyes are closed against the pull 
of bristles in her hair. 
                                      You are caught 
like the woman in the photograph. 
It is your shadow on the wall, your pinky 
held up. 
              Let me ask you: Have you ever 
been this tender even one day in your life? 

//

I am drawn to the many fictions of Carrie Mae Weems The Kitchen Table Series, the staged photographs and Weems as fictitious protagonist in a relationship gone awry. A series of self-portraits that are not a portrait of the self at all. Untitled (Woman Brushing Hair), in which the woman is getting her hair done by another woman who is tucked into shadow, lingers. I wrote this poem in a writing session with francine j. harris, whose questions for the photograph were, “What is this relationship? Is this a habit?” I approached francine’s questions obliquely, charged with the longing I felt to have my hair done by hands that knew it and me. I’ll travel shortly to see my sister, my mother who lives with her, and my niece, all of whom have done my hair at some point in our lives, all of whom live nearly seven hundred miles away. Whose head do I touch, I wonder. Who, besides my sweet wife, would trust me with her crown and glory. 

//

(Note: Carrie Mae Weems work is not in the public domain, which is why we’ve linked to Untitled [Woman Brushing Hair] above.)