The Wicked One Goes to the Makeup Counter By Janet McNally
You can’t argue beauty’s not an accident, the particular heft and angle
of a chromosome’s spin. A tarted spangle, bright lanyard twist, the slip
of cells weighting this boat uneven from stern to prow. We’re all
skittery as marbles on a marble floor. Beauty stays, then goes;
it fades, we say, something about years and sun, the nights we slept
in makeup and left mascara like ashes on the pillowcase. We burned
through every one of our dreams. I wasn’t always a stepmother, you know.
There were whole years when I was a girl. But now, these ladies
sell me moisturizer, stand close in their lab coats, pretending at science
in a fog of perfume. They wield a contour brush and my cheekbone pops.
The magic settles uneasy; it turns out fairy dust was always
fake. And the lipstick’s made from beetles, shells crushed vermillion.
My color is Fleshpot, they say, it’s Folie or Fixation. It’s Wilderness;
it’s Artificial Earth. They can’t quite make themselves care.
We’ll waste it, they know, whatever we’ve been given.
~The Wicked One Goes to the Makeup Counter By Janet McNally