THE ALFALFA COWLICK DILEMMA
Somewhere between
stretch marks on my voice
and the lurch of wanting,
I left the comb behind.
Let wind speak.
Let the cowlick rise
as shrine.
Some revolts come hushed—
no banners, no drums.
Only the refusal
to be pressed smooth.
Mine was spiral,
tender.
Unyielding.
In photographs—
always at the edge,
eyes doubting the lens,
halfway posed
between certain
and unsettled.
They named me Alfalfa—
after a rerun on Channel 12,
my crown a stubborn herald,
slanted with knowledge
I was too young to carry.
It whispered
to wind and window alike: go.
Mother’s hands smoothed it—
Blue Magic thick on her palms.
The brush grumbled in the bowl.
“What kind of boy’s hair does that?”
I didn’t answer.
What language holds defiance
that sprouts from the scalp,
a swirl refusing compliance?
No shadow held me.
Not in the barbershop glass,
nor beside the field
where fathers raised their voices
like flags of demand.
Manhood—a thing trimmed,
gripped, endured.
What I recall most:
the pause before questions,
heavy as drapery.
Hands—mine,
uncertain of posture.
Too much wave.
Too much reach.
They warned:
keep your hands plain.
Fists, if needed.
Folded, if God called.
Manhood, they said, came in parts:
a belt’s cold buckle,
a coach’s growl,
a girl’s number smudged
on math-paper margins.
I declined the offering.
Marked my own rituals—
in glances,
in beads of refusal
rolling off strings
never meant for amen.
The barbershop—
each time, a quiet chapel.
Men in capes awaiting
judgment or absolution.
But I kept the tangle.
My minor crown.
The map drawn by refusal.
Each coil: a quiet psalm.
Now—
I walk, not straighter,
just truer.
A boy turned man
by the long arc of detour—
learning joy lives
along roads that curve away
from expectation.
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