She places the gray rectangle of shadow
above her chin, delicately as a name card
at a dinner setting. It is a simple truth -
that the sun's angle would darken this patten -
a math that she calculates steadily, the way
she pulls silver through her earlobes.
This face invents her
as she sits potted
before the mirror, painting
the endless Mexican desert
behind her pupils, unlit. Pursing
the red tin of her lips.
She recalls sitting in a toilet stall, head sobbing between her bare knees. She recalls sitting on a stoop to call long distance, hesitating on the last digit, and no one answering after five brave rings. She recalls curling fetal on her floor, surrounded by piles of colors, clothes, ideas, straining over which costume to bear.
She mixes these recollections
into a dark rouge
for her cheeks.
5 comments:
I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.
Interpreter of Maladies is drying on my windowsill.
I love you enough to counteract Airy's hate.
you both need to give me actual help on this poem. i think its gonna be my writers cafe shindig.
and i love and hate you back.
I would subtract both thats in the first stanza, I think they are unnecessary. I'll say more later, food just arrived.
This is the only reason I'm going to come to writer's cafe. Contact me through some other means than blogspot sometime?
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