I see a woman with double chins,
both overgrown with a downy blonde
pelt, as I drive south on state route 90.
Darker hairs, spangled through the goatee,
are stiff and perpendicular to her
face. She coughs, belches—something—
some full-body spasm sends pink
debris spraying. It becomes flocking
for the glass and dusty vinyl dash. But
she does not drop the napkined snack
in her left hand. Clings. She squeezes
tighter instead, causing its clotted gore to
dribble out, down to her wide thigh.
Transfixed, I cannot even watch
the rest of the road. She drives on,
sucking pale, doughy fingers romantically
and one at a time. Her eyes bug,
she gags, sprays again; I lose her then,
at my exit. But she is imprinted on me:
the bloated, bread-faced and bearded
corporeality of Sin. A hermaphroditic
travesty it will be a chore to forget.
Later in the day, drunk on sour mash
and rye, I see her selling sunglasses
from a steel kiosk on a city side street.
She picks pale pulp from her teeth
with the corner of an envelope, twists
slug lips to a cadaver grimace, smiles
while studying her reflection in the
mirrored lens on a pair of Ray Bans.
And I realize, watching her watch her-
self, that she is not horrified, not
sickened. Because a mirror reveals
irrelevance. Skin. It is in other people
that one might catch sight of
the shape of his soul.
(2003)
