POETRY

Finalist for the 2025 Auburn Witness Poetry Prize Honoring Jake Adam York

To Plait Another’s Hair

By Ellen Sazzman     VOLUME 58 No. 3

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East Carroll Parish Prison Farm, Louisiana

I remember an afternoon at the iron pile [ . . . ] watching the men
plait each other’s hair between sets at the weight bench [ . . . ] It was
a steaming day; the men were lifting weights and plaiting their hair.
—C.D. Wright, One Big Self

To lay one’s scalp bare to one’s friend or enemy--
such an act of trust and intimacy.
Plaiting: the ancient practice of braiding three or more strands of hair
by twisting under and over,
over and under each other to make one thick length,
the intricate art used by African tribes
to communicate lineage, wealth, marital status, religious affiliation.
I found a plait of my Polish mother’s auburn hair,
faded and stiff, in her bottom dresser drawer, folded in tissue.
Not to be confused
with her carrottop cousin’s plait cut off at the nape in the camp--
delousing—and sent
to German factories to make socks for sailors and bomb ignitions.
Not to be confused with plate,
the flat heavy cast iron disc lifted above the weighted bench,
above the plaited head,
until pushed to failure in the leaded air. Not to be confused
with patterned plaits molded
by plantation slaves into a code for escape, the plaits interwoven
with rice and beans for nourishment.
A plait can also be interlaced with beads or shells or argument,
can be knotted into a noose.
Whose sentence sentenced these prisoners anyway to weaving rows,
lifting weights, and waiting,
waiting for hair to grow, beards to gray, waiting for barred leaves to change,
for the fall. Waiting
the only time they know, counting strands like hours. To plait another’s hair,
fingers braid
a testament upon the scalp and rivet the last with tenderness.



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ELLEN SAZZMAN is a Pushcart-nominated poet whose work has recently been published in The Bryant Literary Review, Loch Raven Review, Clackamas Literary Review, Slipstream, Atlanta Review, FOLIO, Delmarva Review, Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Lilith, Peregrine, and Common Ground Review, among others. Her collection The Shomer was a finalist for the Blue Lynx Prize and a semi-finalist for the Elixir Antivenom Award and the Codhill Press Award. She was awarded first place in the I-70 Review’s 2025 Bill Hickok Award for Humor in Poetry. She was also awarded first place in the 2022 Dancing Poetry Festival, received an honorable mention in the 2019 Ginsberg poetry contest, was shortlisted for the 2018 O’Donoghue Prize, and was awarded first place in Poetica’s 2016 Rosenberg poetry competition.


VOLUME 58 No. 3