Ode to Chinese Superstitions, Haircuts, and Being a Girl

Chinese superstition tells me it’s bad luck
         to get a haircut when I’m sick, and my hair
gets cut twice a year, because I let it grow,
         tying it into a ponytail, exposing my forehead,
looking like I’m the protagonist of an anime,
         which makes me think about my last name,
Chan, also known as the  Japanese honorific
         for someone endearing. Chan, like a friend

                                      or someone childlike. I’ve been told I sound
                             like a child when I pick up the phone, or maybe
                                      it’s my pure joy to hear from the ones I love.
                             And yes, voices are sexier than faces, so dial me,
                                      honey, let’s get a little wild tonight, as I pour
                             a glass of  bourbon and picture myself in anime—
                                      cartoon Chan starring in a slice-of-life show
                             about a girl group trying to make it, and you bet


I’d be the rambunctious one, the tomboy-
         rabble-rouser-ringleader on the drums—
the  trouble  with the exposed forehead, also
         known in East Asian culture as a symbol
of  aggression, because an exposed forehead
         puts everything out there—you’re telling
the world you’re ready for a takedown,
         and according to my father, good Chinese


                                      girls never show their foreheads, and I know
                             he wishes I were born in the Year of  the Rabbit,
                                      like my mother, the perfect woman with flawless
                             skin who never causes trouble with the boys, but
                                      no, I’m the Year of the Snake, and I always bring
                             the party, cause the trouble, or as my lover says,
                                      I’m sarcastic wit personified, and it’s boundless,
                             because I am Dorothy—pop embodied in a gingham


skirt with a puppy and a picnic basket
         filled with prosciutto and gouda and Prosecco,
but really, what is my fate? And my mother
         tells me the family fortune teller got me all
wrong, because there’s no way in hell
         I’d end up being a housewife with three
children and a breadwinner of a husband.
         But of course, the fortune teller got my brother’s


                                      fate right. It’s moments like this when I wonder
                             if I even matter because I’m a girl and not a boy.
                                      It’s moments like this when I think about my fate,
                             or how Chinese superstition tells me not to cut or wash
                                      my hair on Lunar New Year, so all my good fortune
                             won’t be snipped away. But really, what is fate?
                                      I tie my hair back and put on a short skirt, ready
                             to take over the world—forehead forever exposed.

Source: Poetry (October 2020)