Ode to my Uni-brow

Miscellaneous, Poems

Perhaps it is not pronounced enough to easily notice,
at least from a distance, but praise be to the hairs
populating the Bering Straight, or more accurately

crossing the Mediterranean — bridge like cedar planks
with black nails, bridge like the boat
my jido came here in, bridge to Dearborn,

Michigan. The hairs stand up like spines, like each
is a monument over the bridge
of my nose. Since high school I used to keep the middle

trimmed, used clippers to separate such striving
for togetherness, in the name of neatness, I told myself,
though how so many of us have tried to pass, and true —
that is a form of survival but this now also
a form of thriving, of what refuses to be cut down
any longer, so praise be to the hairiness my Lebanese

family shares, praise be to owning what may keep
the TSA’s eyes on us, though god-willing not their hands
(and fuck the TSA, while we’re at it), and praise be

to pride and to the Muslim man at the gas station
who asks if I am Muslim, too, and though I am not, praise
to being seen as a brother (and to the beard

and back and knuckle hair, while we’re at it) —
an oak with so many of its leaves
refusing to enter another shaven autumn,

a cedar holding tight to all its needles.

Published in Waxwing Issue 15