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Clip / Caste
It’s the Friday before a holiday so the barber shop
is wild with boys, all from my school, none a friend.
Glum in the back, I wait to be summoned to one of four
barbers. Jimmy the owner up front is the one you want
and the cool boys from the nice blocks swarm
his chair, jostling each other, laughing big laughs
until they are called to the clippers, while I—
predictably—get Pete, short guy with the fourth chair
who quickly snips, buzzes, rubs in green goo, combs.
I hand him the coin father gave me for the tip.
He says nothing. Nor do I. Outside in the gathering
dusk, Jimmy’s boys are waiting for their pals.
Our haircuts, I see, all look perfectly the same.
But theirs are better.
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Paul Genega is the author of Outtakes: New and Selected Poems 1975-2023 (Salmon Poetry, 2023) and six previous collections. His poetry received the “Discovery”/The Nation Prize, the Lucille Medwick Award from The New York Quarterly, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, among other honors. He is Professor Emeritus at Bloomfield College, New Jersey, where he founded the creative writing program, taught literature and writing, and served as chair of Humanities. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Bruce Davidson, Brooklyn Gang, Brooklyn, NY, 1959
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