It must have been something, long ago— this old lady’s cleavage on display at the DMV where we will sit for the rest of time. Not much to look at now though its deep crevice and swells still draw the eye. The foam cups of her black tank-top’s shelf bra are lumpy under the outer fabric like a cramped theater where you can see the actors stripping in the wings. She looks like a woman leather-clad bikers would have torn each others’ throats out over, like someone who would, if not relish, at least respect that process. Someone who would interpret power in its most literal sense and hop on the bike with the last man standing whether he was the same she rode in with or not, loyalty being a thing earned and therefore valuable. I imagine her presence in this lobby, proof of residency in hand, is a stand, finally, against her life’s necessary compromises. She will drive—pull taut the black fingerless gloves with the metal studs, grip the handle bars, kick start the machine. I want her roaring out of this strip mall, gray hair twisting like a flag, slicing through traffic and drawing looks of envy from the jammed. I catch her eye and smile like I know you, human. She turns away, in no mood to be pitied or championed. There’s a wrinkled Y at the cleft of her bloated breasts. It takes momentum, when her number is called, and both hands pushing against the chair to lift herself up to a stoop—like taking a bow.
I do not think it will
make me pretty: this goopy promo
mask I found sealed in a
foil pouch
tucked in
the crease of a magazine.
No, I slathered it over my
face because
I love the feel
of peeling its hardened shell
the same way I loved pulling
sheets of dead
skin like strips
of film from my little sister’s sun
burned back, the soft stick like a
piece of tape.
I do not think
this mask will make me beautiful
though now I wish it would,
as my mouth
is settling
into its thirties and men
I don’t know like the butcher
yesterday
seem more tolerant
than interested in my humanity
and questions about when
I can expect
more Andouille
and how does the Italian
taste in comparison? So
I’m getting
an inkling
of that invisibility you hear some
older women complain of though
I still buy
generic face cream
because Consumer Reports
says “no difference” and
I won’t trade
that sound,
earned sense for the same vain
hope that kept me sliding
my desperate
wrists across
perfume samples throughout
my teens because magazines
told me
I could control
the way I smelled and tried to
teach me how to trade money
for beauty,
how to snag
a man and do sex in a way
that kept him coming back,
how to survive
every humiliation—
the breakups, a rape, those ten
extra pounds—with a glow, not a
pimple, not a
wrinkle, not a crack.
Lindsay Doukopoulos has a Ph.D. from the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi and is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Auburn University. Her poems have recently appeared in Word Riot, Cimmaron Review, and Tin House.