Can We Touch Your Hair?
Can We Touch Your Hair?
By Skye Jackson
at the parades, everyone
wants to touch my hair.
on the corner
of st charles and marengo,
i am cold & smashed & puffy
when two white women
try to convince me
that they love my hair
no they really really do
they say because it is so
black and thick and curly
and soaking up all of the
water in the damp air.
the mousy one says
through an alabama drawl:
gawd, you can do so much with it
and her blonde friend says:
ya can’t do a damn thing with mine,
won’t even hold a curl.
she runs away to grab another friend
and says to her: stacey, isn’t it even
prettier than macy gray’s?
we just love her,
don’t we?
they circle me and ask:
can we touch your hair?
and then, suddenly,
just like my ancestors long ago,
i am pulled apart
soft
by pale hands
from all directions.
Skye Jackson was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. She has served as a poetry editor for Bayou
Magazine, French Quarter Journal & Tilted House. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Electric
Literature, Green Mountains Review, RATTLE and elsewhere. Her debut chapbook, A Faster Grave, won the
2019 Antenna Prize. She was a finalist for the 2020 RATTLE Poetry Prize. In 2021, she won the AWP
Intro Journals Award and was twice nominated for Best New Poets. Poets & Writers has recognized her as a
New Orleans “Poet to Watch.”