I have one of those removable complexions.
I molt blonde hair, shed my automatic teeth
and discard my mechanical eye. I am older than hieroglyphics;
I gain every lap. I walk the plank,
pearls in my heels, swirling like Ophelia’s resentful drain.
I accent like a fig, rot as bouquet, fly at the blooded meat.
I am your tulip bulb and its papery dress, lifted.
I am cooked, early in the day, and set
to ooze and plump. I am a wand, a cup, the clack of wristbone
on wood. I have one of those foldable complexions
you can carry in your handbag.
I peel back my sockets, show the swift and dazzle
of my inner mud. I have one of those
sinkable complexions, swaying to the bottom,
current-sick. I am young as an ambush.
There is a camouflage for every ill.
Rachel Abramowitz’s poems and reviews have appeared in Tin House Online, The Threepenny Review, Seneca Review, The Kenyon Review Online, Crazyhorse, Tupelo Quarterly, Oxonian Review, POOL, jubilat, Sprung Formal, Colorado Review, and others. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the University of Oxford, and has taught English Literature at Barnard College in New York.