Highbrow Eyebrow Poem

I'm only posting this because Fran at Being Me had an eyebrow issue recently and I mentioned I had just the poem.

I must confess I've been slightly traumatised by what I found when searching for 'knitted body parts' on Google. 

Be careful what you wish for.


My grandmother knitted her own eyebrows

you had to in those days – there was a war on.
It was that or gravy browning, but she’d used
that up on the back of her legs to fashion
the illusion of stockings. Visually effective,
but never quite so warm.

The same was true of the eyebrow:
A line would do, at a push, in an emergency,
but if you really wanted to be warm
and keep the falling debris from your eyes
knitted ones were so much more ‘the thing.’

She used number three ply and knit one pearl one.
(I don’t know if that’s true but then I never asked
– so many things I didn’t think to ask about
‘til later. All I remember is her warning me
off plucking them: Or they won’t grow back, she said.)

I tried plucking my legs with this promise in mind,
but they always returned. It was like the hair
in different body parts obeyed different rules
– and some obeyed no rules at all. I used to think

everyone’s pubes would be as black as mine.
and was shocked the first time I saw a naked redhead,
for that (and several other) reasons.

So I didn’t pluck them. Partly because
I never learned to knit – I could do the basics
but none of that casting on or off –

so if I’d tried to knit my brows they would have gone
on and on forever. Which is frowned upon.