I scrubbed my face until it went
down the drain, down to the sewer
where it swam with the others, snapping
its jaws, eyes glowing red above water, who knows
what they do down there. Could you blame me
for scrapping that creature, when so often
I’d lost face, hiding that mug even a mother
would cover? I’d long felt less wholesome
than most people, less polished, more
potholed, too much of my underworld
showing. What I’d give to be smoothed
over, flattened—steamrolled and streetswept—
to be made a cartoon, a rich palimpsest
of graffiti on graffiti—all the fears
and longings I gulp daily down my gullet
like pennies dropped down a well, the splash
and ripple at bottom—all that depth
an illusion on paper, a scrap I’d crumple up
and toss to the gutter. Face it,
I was only surface: my father’s nose,
my mother’s ears, those eyes composed
of my country’s dust, never enough skin
in all the world to cover that face. But
as I walked along, faceless, I slipped on
crumpled mugs that littered the road.
It was sprinkled with them, as if the street wept
its defacement. Workers were loading them up,
trucking them to the dump, heaping mounds
of grimaces. These belonged to those whose lives
were crushed, homes razed by war,
the fullness of their histories sketched
skin-deep as caricatures. In shame I saw
my desire was a surface. It covered
another desire that growled neglected
below, scaly and sharp-toothed, that ravenous
longing to know the world to its core. On my knees
I fished for my face through an uncovered
manhole. Quick! Grab hold of your mug
before it grows legs and scurries
to the sewer! Put your ear
to the pavement: the mating bellows
echo deep below the surface.