His vanity requires no response
and breaks a woman’s mirror:
One woman, hardly aware
of her departed lover, slips
into her make up, whereupon
a second accepts the acting life.
For Hollywood off Broadway,
she donates body parts to the poverty
of a man’s senses of self. A great
nothing blows her skirt up, and she
embeds her feet into the cement
of her shadow. With his boar’s head
pelvis and oyster in hand like his neighbor,
Mr. Fillmore, buries himself in toys
leaving behind a pile of Mimi scouring
the shallow years for a woman.
