Queens Ascending
all over Jamaica Kew Gardens
Astoria and Forest Hills
beauticians are taking flight
they put down their curling irons
leave the blow-dryers on full
rise away from the toxic puddles
of nail polish remover,
the sad piles of tweezed eyebrow hair
the mounds
of fluffy bleached curls
strewn like rushes on the checked linoleum
they rise up over the 99 cent stores
the dry cleaners the funeral parlors
the basketball courts and the bodegas
the bridges humming with cars like shining eggs
the subway lines singing their mechanical vibrato
their press-on nails their aprons
the scissors in their pockets fall away
their lipstick peels away to nothing
and high, high above the borough
that is shaped like two clasped hands
they sprout wings
our angels of beauty
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