Brown Brown Brown, castaña y mas cafe!
Where is the blonde? Brown, brown, brown, silky, straight
and long and overwhelmingly dark, not like the
Sun we live under and the shadows it casts
That are so ebony, like the tired mess that rests
upon the poor Indian's head bends over to grab
the pearls he lost so long ago in hungry childhood. There... under the sun that cooked his soups
and the winds that kissed his stinging hands from the jalepeños he picked and the ants that
bit his hands in the field, his tired black hair
is not brown like so many others.

Our long hair, that is so tightly woven for our
Men and knotted into a thousand braids, like mother snakes -- that we
so love and so hate, because they are so tight and it burns my eyes like popped pepper pods.

And the eyes of millions of people with billions of hairs; on the streets in the markets
looking for the perfect gem, for the perfect mango to eat in the stalls
and then they walk along the yawning stretch of turquoise shore lines.

There the winds will come and they'll touch the hair that blows in their face and in our eyes, the hair
That makes my vision fade into black and eventually into the frightening primordial glitter that never
Disappears and the beautiful Spanish that never went away in Los Angeles where the son of a man
who claimed he was king exploded our homes into million and one flames.


Flames that slit our cheeks and flames that cut our hair.