Every day but Sunday we passed her and the wigs—
shelves and bins and spinning racks of wigs…
She worked out of the entryway to a disused
factory on 14th Street, whose landlords, desperate
for renters, would let a doorway to a wig seller,
and partitioned upper floors with sheetrock
and hack wiring into lofts, to rent illegally
to us—out of college and aspiring
painters, writers, dancers, a New Wave band,
composers, architects—all hungry, all would-be:
all of us wanting to be received.
Every morning early, heading for day jobs,
and returning early evening, day spent,
we ran that gauntlet of artificial hair
seeking to match every race and blend
of humanity. And further—fantastical, over-the-top
inventions: dayglo wigs in chartreuse, orange, rainbow;
red, white & blue wigs; fright wigs;
wigs for drag queens, clowns, and Halloween.
Saturday mornings, wandering out
to a late breakfast, or wandering in, head misty
from an all-night party, we’d find her there,
taciturn and stoic on her stool.
Two years I lived there, two years
nodding and smiling to her, yet now
it occurs to me, in two years I never saw
a customer. As we made our livings,
she made hers, purveying to longings
we could not imagine, owned by persons
we could not see, their needs as many and particular
as the God-numbered hairs on our heads.
—William Wenthe
William Wenthe’s fourth book of poems, God’s Foolishness, was published by LSU Press in 2016.
