SUNDAY shuts down on this twentieth-century evening. <br />The L passes. Twilight and bulb define <br />the brown room, the overstuffed plum sofa, <br />the boy, and the girl's thin hands above his head. <br />A neighbor radio sings stocks, news, serenade. <br /> <br />He sits at the table, head down, the young clear neck exposed, <br />watching the drugstore sign from the tail of his eye; <br />tattoo, neon, until the eye blears, while his <br />solicitous tall sister, simple in blue, bending <br />behind him, cuts his hair with her cheap shears. <br /> <br />The arrow's electric red always reaches its mark, <br />successful neon! He coughs, impressed by that precision. <br />His child's forehead, forever protected by his cap, <br />is bleached against the lamplight as he turns head <br />and steadies to let the snippets drop. <br /> <br />Erasing the failure of weeks with level fingers, <br />she sleeks the fine hair, combing: 'You'll look fine tomorrow! <br />You'll surely find something, they can't keep turning you down; <br />the finest gentleman's not so trim as you!' Smiling, he raises <br />the adolescent forehead wrinkling ironic now. <br /> <br />He sees his decent suit laid out, new-pressed, <br />his carfare on the shelf. He lets his head fall, meeting <br />her earnest hopeless look, seeing the sharp blades splitting, <br />the darkened room, the impersonal sign, her motion, <br />the blue vein, bright on her temple, pitifully beating.<br /><br />Muriel Rukeyser<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/boy-with-his-hair-cut-short/
