Crystal Simone Smith

Smith’s Barbershop

Fayetteville, North Carolina

Red, blue, and white column posts align the flat porch with the short door a statuesque man might dip under. This small edifice should go down in history. A commemorative stamp, Forever Saturday mornings, 1973.  Black GIs in green fatigues filing in with hardy laughter and chatter heard above the buzz of blades and scrap of razors. It should be painted and memorialized on a treasured poster like Uncle Sam in his top hat and gray locks romancing young men with the words, I Want You. This quiet of swivel chairs, cobwebbed jars of combs, and faded mirrors. From a window inside you can see the future across the street, a shopping complex with calzones and the new Fantastic Sam’s Salon. The bulldozer ready to level this place to dust.

annual gathering—
a trumpet solo
and all this silence

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About the Author

Crystal Simone Smith is a poet, indie-publisher, and educator.  Her work has appeared in numerous journals including Prairie Schooner, POETRY Magazine, frogpond, Acorn, and Modern Haiku, and her collection of haiku, Ebbing Shore, won the Haiku Foundation Touchstone Distinguished Book Award (2022).The recipient of a Duke University Humanities Unbounded Fellowship, she writes poetry about the human condition and social change.

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