Marco Adin

I sat in the barbershop
on the sticky naugahyde chair
scrawny in my white tee
and green shorts, waiting my turn,
wanting the perfect flattop
that would stay the same length
as the day John the Barber cut it.

It never seemed to work that way,
the mystery of ever-growing hair.
So, every other Saturday afternoon
I would turn up at John's for a trim.
My father thought me vain for a ten year old,
but he never understood perfection.

The shop smelled of Reynaud's French Talc,
its exotic fine mist hung in the air.
I liked to look at Sports Illustrated,
The pictures of guns. A place of men.
I loved it there.

Occasionally I'd check the progress
of the haircut ahead of me
in John's one barber chair,
eager to be next, to hop up
for my cool, flattop cut.
I noticed this guy's wasn't flat.
My turn next. Yeah.

Suddenly, the man in the chair
burst into brilliant white flames.
It was so white hot I couldn't see.
I was blinded for a minute,
it looked like a black-blue
outline in the fiery chair.
I blinked, and through teary eyes,
I blinked and kept seeing
the outline; I blinked,
no matter how I turned my head,
it didn't go away and I was
unable to move, and neither
was John, who stood to the side
with his mouth in an Oh.

The barber's sheet, unscathed,
covered a pile of gray ashes
on the dark maroon seat
where only a moment ago
a man was getting a haircut.
Even the little tissue paper
John would roll around
your neck, wasn't burned.

"Spontaneous Combustion,"
the newspapers called it.
You can call it what you like.
I saw it happen.

I often think about
that moment when I was a kid,
just hoping for a perfect flattop
on a Saturday afternoon.
It was just before the world
that awaits us was revealed
in a flash of uncompromising truth.

FLAT TOP

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