If, spread out in the sun
this face a Monet print La Mayonnaise,
you spread this face to white bread toast,
would it dry and wrinkle like anniversaries,
Black April?
My eyes, the puncture wounds of a sewing needle,
do not teach evacuation of any city,
but this face, this cloth, a boon to many
ambassadors form a ripple through mobs of infants
splitting
from the breast and tide so tense, they board
postcards to home, thin with oaths of rounder eyes
and rounder hearts. My eyes, the frayed edge
of such lies—the national guard, reconstructive
surgery,
my flat face a jingle in the jungle of smoke rings
and men a little too small for their own good
cross-dressing for pleasures of married Monets abroad,
the oil on canvas for all things
Mayonnaise
docked and had with cheese, silk wigs or tape
to hold the grin back like a tight leather belt,
the honest beast of no nation who wears my face as costume,
as trial, as beauty and error, as white as white toast can be,
as exhibit or irony, as statement, as a statement piece, as race unravelling.
