POETRY

Photo: Some of the most beautiful specimens . . . Mona Kayhan, Persis Karim, and Aphrodite Desiree Navab, New York, September 18, 2009.

***

I am the only one of four sisters

who hasn’t gone under the knife.

I resisted the pleas of my aunt and sisters

to become “more beautiful,” “more you.”

I’ve kept my stately proboscis

in-tact—choosing not to excise its grandeur.

It suits me, I suppose—evidence of my father,

those people who live in the dryer, hotter climes

of the Mediterranean, in high desert plateaus,

cooling themselves with naso-thermo-regulation.

My old Jewish boyfriend used to say how do the goyim

breathe from those things anyway?

On my wedding day, my husband, also Jewish

and rather plentiful in that region of his face

completed his vows by saying “there is no guarantee in love,

but of this, I am certain: if we have a child he or she

will have a really big nose.” When I nuzzle him

with mine, he pulls back his face, jumps

at the coldness of its tip. Contrary to popular belief, the nose

is not merely cosmetic—it can gauge temperature beyond the body.

And that’s another thing, I’ve realized about the nose—

that smell is an underrated sense, perhaps a gift.

Imagine the possibilities for amplification: aromas

of jasmine, apple pie, saffron, lemon, rose,

might grow more intense, depending on the height

and angle of that fleshy mound. I admit to having no

scientific evidence for this, but I do wonder

what happens when a person alters

the things they were born with.

Whole industries were born from Iranian women

watching blonde, petite-nosed movie stars

who made them forget their own striking beauty

took thousands of years to evolve, only to be undone

by someone who decided that hairless, plucked, tucked,

sliced, nipped, and trimmed, were the loveliest




of them all. I like to think of the nose as great art

waiting to be discovered. Like those large-nosed kings

depicted on sides of temples, on papyrus, on caves, in colorful

Mayan pictographs like Popul Voh. Noses were signs

of nobility and prowess. Any king with a puny one

might have been thought of as small and impotent.

These days, I get a steady stream of emails offering penis

enlargement. But that’s hidden, visible only

in bedroom interludes. The nose is the public display

of one’s endowments—the relief map of a human face.

I study people’s noses in order to read their origins—

to situate my gaze, to find how far out

in the world they really are.