make-up

Make-up

It was rare and towards the end it was almost

never but when my mother would wear make-up

she knew how, and each stroke was careful, asked

no questions, her hands were only on her face.

I can’t remember everything just now but it was

typical rouge and mascara and she was transformed,

she wasn’t made up so much as made over, she was

glow and smile—

but who, going out to milk a cow, or later, change 
the dressing on a kid’s bit open cheek or later than that 
a dressing on a husband’s mangled hand?  Who stops 
first, after loading the washer, in the bright vanity 

light and chooses the cakes of color, liners of the day?  Who has time

with all that shit to muck? But rare mornings I’d come to 
the bright bathroom and she’d have an angle 
on the mirror that was absolutely the sharpest

and her cigarette would be burning on the edge 
of the sink and I could see it and the scattered ash 
on the floor, another brown pock in the linoleum 
and she’d be rolling out the tube of lipstick, 

and her lips were first relaxed then blotted then puckered

and then, just there on the corner of her mouth, a fresh

scab and above it an inch or two, the fading vein

finding its way beneath pink skin, but still, still

rough and yellow as the beer piss on the floor

that, even though I was barefoot, I ignored, while

I watched her swirl the brush into the rouge

fan it tap it and like a once was master, cover

the canvas, starting in the back, beyond the corner

of the eye, where the road had turned to mud

in last night’s heavy rain.