As I’ve embarked on my self-managed and DIY (albeit fun) press tour for my debut collection of poetry, I seem to bring with me an elephant of size into every literary room I enter.
It’s No Lace Fronts in Iowa City.
Whether it’s the unanimous chuckle from the audience when it’s read from my bio by a well-meaning emcee or the stares of sheer confusion when I simply answer the question I was asked, the reaction is, more often than not, quite…extreme.
Here are some of my favorite reactions to hearing the book’s title:
5. Oh, I thought you said No LAKE Fronts in Iowa City!
4. Okay…
3. Period!
2. Yeah, that makes sense.
1. They go to jail?! In Iowa City?!
So let’s get one thing out of the way: a lace front is a kind of lace wig. Yes, a hair wig. Yes, a wig you wear on your head. Yes, there is mention of a hair wig that you wear on your head in the title of my book.
Lace front wigs are like the Invisalign of wigs. They’re the closest we’ve gotten to undetectable. They’re those wigs with the “screen door part” that the girlies on TikTok glue around the perimeter of their foreheads before sealing with a Velcro band and the mouth of a hair blower. It’s the kind of wig many of us have been *begging* Tyler Perry to squeeze into his film budgets. It’s the very first kind of wig I bought and wore out into the world.
Her name was Terri. Like most non-human hair wigs, she arrived wrapped in netting, lain in a box, and named. Terri. If we’re being formal, her full name was Sensationnel Cloud9 Swiss Lace Front Wig – Terri (4). She was 22 inches tall, bayang-blessed, heat-resistant up to 400 degrees Fahrenheit, and birthed with an exquisite 4×4 lace parting area. She had an awful synthetic shine. She tangled almost immediately. I loved her. When she arrived in the mail (shoutout and RIP to wigtypes dot com), I plaited my own hair—my ever-dry, ever-damaged, ever-shoulder-length hair—and secured Terri onto my dome with four clips and a dream. I wore her to my corporate job the next day. And the next. And the next.
Since Terri, there’s been Yvette, Lilyana, Neesha, Julianne, Kiyara, Annie, and Sensationnel’s magnum opus: Latisha. She was colossal. A tremendous wig with a perfect lace front. I glued her onto my head at 6, 7, 8 o’clock in the morning. I softened her grip at 1, 2, 3 o’clock in the morning. She wore my perfume. Nestled her strands into the space behind my ears. She left her bounce in my barrettes, her pull in my reddening scalp. When one iteration of Latisha dulled out, I adapted to the next. I secured her best hits: Flamboyage Mocha Latisha, Flamboyage Blonde Latisha, Medium Brown Latisha. I wore her to the club, to work, to night class, to my grandma’s eightieth birthday party in Orlando, to Printer’s Row Lit Fest in Chicago, to a hotel bar in downtown Milwaukee, to the thirst trap on my Instagram story. I wore Latisha so much that I forgot where she ended, and I started.
As the publication date of my debut collection nears, I’ve been considering all the ways I might better explain my title. If I’m being honest, I’ve been agonizing over the ways I might better justify my title. Similar to how I tried to justify Latisha to my relatives who just “didn’t get why” I needed to wear wigs. Similar to how I tried to justify the hoards of wig boxes bursting through my closet to men who also didn’t love who looked back at them in their own mirrors. Similar to how I try to justify my wig poems to friends, peers, mentors, the elites. A wig could never just be a wig—it’s a world. Built on anti-Blackness, texturism, desirability, and misogynoir, it’s a world, and somewhere between Terri and Latisha, I’ve managed to find my place—that is, survive—in it.
To everyone who loved the title from the jump: I love you, thank you. If you know, you know.
To everyone who was confused by the title: I love you, no worries. This wig’s on me.
To everyone who hated the title—I love you, and I welcome you into my world of lace fronts, Midwest-induced existentialism, and Bronx baby antics. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome!
POETRY
By Meghan Malachi
Madville Publishing LLC
Published June 16, 2026
