LYNN E. COHEN

THE NAIL SALON

The person who does my nails
does not speak English
or so she pretends
all she says is “you pay”
and “how much tip”?
her small son reads nearby
his language skills barely there
I mention I know he is good at math
notice he has lost a tooth or two
how quiet and well-behaved he is
unlike American children I have known and raised
now the person does speak English
wants to know how I know about his math skills
tells me the Good Fairy does not exist in China
and his behavior is cultural
I meet his little brother
who throws a paper airplane
and a tantrum
he does not know his heritage
I guess
neither child is a daughter
What a surprise!
this is not the beauty parlor of my youth
a Saturday gathering of Jackie Kennedy clones
preparing TV dinners for their children
who dined while I feasted on Chatterley and Peyton Place
 

Lynn Cohen teaches writing at Hofstra University and literature and writing at Suffolk County Community College. She has recently published a chapbook, Lone Star Days. Some of her recent poems appear in the 2005 Freshet Anthology, the Literary Review, The Improper Hamptonian Magazine, Creations Magazine as well as in The Pedestal Magazine Political Anthology. Her scholarly essay entitled “Universal Themes Running Recurrently through Momentary Fragments in Time in the Works of Emily Dickinson and T. S. Eliot” is being anthologized by Abbeywood Press in All Things Emily. And she has poems scheduled to be published in upcoming Abbeywood Press Anthologies. She has also published in small journals, other anthologies and has won poetry prizes. Recently, she read at the Women’s History Month Celebration at Hofstra University and was a featured poet at a Performance Poets Association Reading at the Bryant Library in Roslyn, Long Island, at the New York Poetry Forum in New York City and on Radio Free Hamptons.