I told Lurleen, and her mama and daddy tried to tell her, too,
that no good would come of ratting her hair that high,
using all that hairspray. We all like a little bit of lift on top—
I do, too, even now—but Lurleen always did take things
a little bit too far. The shortest skirts, the tallest boots,
the highest hair. I told her she should at least take it down
and wash it now and then. She’d just laugh, light another
Lark cigarette. I thought maybe her hairdo would explode,
catch on fire someday. We all knew something would
happen. But what actually did happen—all them
baby black widow spiders hatching one day, biting
on Lurleen’s head as she screamed and cried, tried
to smack them, her beautiful tall tower of hair
just falling all around her, and all those little dots
of blood and smacked spiders on her shoulders—
well. That was something I’ll never forget, nor
anybody else around here, neither. I still think of it
every day now, when I take my comb and my Aqua Net,
look in the mirror, decide Maybe that’s high enough.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Spiders in the Hairdo/Tressed to Kill

Do you have an urban legend that you’d like to see made into a persona poem like this? If so, please leave it in the comments. Thanks!