Hijab

If it would help, think of me like a nun
who loves God more than glamour
who makes your street her convent
clothes herself in prayer.

My dress caricatures me in your eyes
like stripey sweater and a bag of ‘swag’
the cowboy with the black hat/evil heart
as if Kalashnikovs clank round my knees.

Your barbed stares try to penetrate,
a blacked-out price on market goods,
trying to fool you with my foreign ways.
Or else you pity me, caged in cloth
and tamed by some fanatic ring-master.

But I reflect your pity-arrows back
bare-midriffed in your desperate race
to snare a man; outshine, outflash,
outburn, stay ever young. Exposed,
shame-stripped, you sell yourself too cheap.

You dance to some hypnotic global tune
twitch like puppets: starve, slice skin
thinner, younger, Barbie’s acolytes.

While, quiet in my habit, I can be
exactly who I am.