Artificial Flavors
I sat in the salon chair
next to my mother,
sucked blue raspberry Icee
up a red plastic straw.
Mom’s hairdresser--
I want to say Sandy
(fake lashes, pink lipstick)--
clucked and chattered
like a cartoon chicken.
Chewing grape shoestring licorice
wound up in a white paper bag,
I bobbed my head to The Archies
singing through ceiling speakers
set among the fluorescent lights:
Sugar, ah honey honey . . .
I stuck my tongue out at the mirror.
Its shade of purpley blue
looked just like the woman’s hair
that stank two chairs over.
Mom’s hair—snips falling to the floor
like wet feathers—was Ultra Black,
colored at home with a squeeze bottle
and flimsy see-through gloves.
Eventually, my tongue faded to pink,
and Mom let her hair turn white
under a wig when it started falling out
from chemo.
But back at the Emporium salon
in Coddingtown Mall--
women flipping through magazines
under space helmet dryers—
I am eight years old,
licorice dangles from my mouth,
and Mom is alive.
“Artificial Flavors” by Aaron Caycedo-Kimura
Original copyright © 2019 and to be published in
Common Grace: Poems by Beacon Press in 2022
Reprinted with permission of Beacon Press, Boston, Massachusetts
next to my mother,
sucked blue raspberry Icee
up a red plastic straw.
Mom’s hairdresser--
I want to say Sandy
(fake lashes, pink lipstick)--
clucked and chattered
like a cartoon chicken.
Chewing grape shoestring licorice
wound up in a white paper bag,
I bobbed my head to The Archies
singing through ceiling speakers
set among the fluorescent lights:
Sugar, ah honey honey . . .
I stuck my tongue out at the mirror.
Its shade of purpley blue
looked just like the woman’s hair
that stank two chairs over.
Mom’s hair—snips falling to the floor
like wet feathers—was Ultra Black,
colored at home with a squeeze bottle
and flimsy see-through gloves.
Eventually, my tongue faded to pink,
and Mom let her hair turn white
under a wig when it started falling out
from chemo.
But back at the Emporium salon
in Coddingtown Mall--
women flipping through magazines
under space helmet dryers—
I am eight years old,
licorice dangles from my mouth,
and Mom is alive.
“Artificial Flavors” by Aaron Caycedo-Kimura
Original copyright © 2019 and to be published in
Common Grace: Poems by Beacon Press in 2022
Reprinted with permission of Beacon Press, Boston, Massachusetts
Aaron Caycedo-Kimura is a writer and visual artist. He is the author of Ubasute, which won the 2020 Slapering Hol Press Chapbook Competition, and the author of the full-length collection Common Grace, forthcoming from Beacon Press in Fall 2022. His poetry has appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Poet Lore, DMQ Review, Crab Creek Review, Tule Review, The Night Heron Barks, and elsewhere. Aaron earned his MFA in creative writing from Boston University and is a recipient of a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship in Poetry. He is also the author and illustrator of Text, Don’t Call: An Illustrated Guide to the Introverted Life (TarcherPerigee, 2017).