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L'Oréal Snell

Website
Years: 2007, 2008, 2009

Biography

L’Oréal Snell's poems have appeared in Ithaca College's IC ViewCoon Bidness /SO4 Literary MagazineReverie: Midwest African American LiteratureCave Canem's XI and XII anthologies, and theblackbottom.com. She has been a featured poet at the Shadow/Ava Lounge in Pittsburgh and The Studio Museum in Harlem. L’Oréal received a Master in Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction from Chatham University and a Master in Arts in Drama Therapy from New York University. She lives in Sugar Hill, Harlem. 

Poem

Blue Magic

When mama used to smooth blue magic in my hair

There was no more blues.

Greasing my scalp like a frying pan 

            Incense don't tickle my eyes.

When mama used to smooth Blue Magic

She eased 

hot combed catching waves and kinks.

There was no more blues.

 

Coon Bidness/SO4 Literary Magazine © 2011

I Remember Cool

I remember cool, cool

summer dusk/easing

Hoards of worn books easing into

The library lull holding quiet

Steady to Grandma’s house, Get her a cool

Pop/cool at the grocery penny-candy don’t forget her

Change, Miss Cool Easter blues

Incense, featherbones and mustard greens

Curb ball, nigger-knocking, penny-candy at the liquor store

Cornrows, Blue Magic, pallet on the floor

Grandma—

Lock the door, shut the blinds

Say something to the Man

Upstairs.

Cave Canem Anthology XII © Willow Books 2012