American Life in Poetry: Snip Your Hair

Our poet this week is 16-year-old Devon Regina DeSalva of Los Angeles, Calif., who says she wrote this poem to get back at her mother, only to find that her mother loved the poem.

I'll snip your hair

Cut it all off until you look like a man

I will replace your weight loss bars with bars to make you gain

I will cut your credit cards in half

I will shrink all your clothes

Every trick in the book I will try

I will give all your shoes to the dog

I will do it all

Crazy is where you will be driven

Off a cliff you will want to jump

Then when I am all done

I will look at you with big doughy eyes

And I will say I am sorry

But I have my fingers crossed

Reprinted from "Untangled: Stories & Poems from the Women & Girls of WriteGirl," WriteGirl Publishers, 2006. Poem copyright 2006 by WriteGirl Publishers and used by permission.

This weekly column is supported by the Poetry Foundation, the Library of Congress and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry. Introduction copyright 2006 by the Poetry Foundation.