“I must see myself as I am.”

She is naked.

“I must look at myself.
Face the broken sleep.
Face the fading tan.
Face the gaping, God-awful grief.
Face the shit, hitting the fan.”

You must slow down, girl. Say why.

“Because I am not all funky interest in sex.
Because I am not yet a neon plaything.
Because in my soul is a hint of
something above the giant sellout, the overblown solo.”

Yet you won't slow down.

“Because I must not. I stand stripped alone and am born
unable to bear that...
O, thank you for feeling me up, Roger.
Thank you for enfolding me, Peter.
Thank you for the ecstasy, Richard.
Thank you for the child, anyone.
In a larger sense, our child, gentlemen...”

You have problems.

“I have problems, yes.
My skin is dangerous to touch.
I am lame on all sides.
I have ingrown talons.
I wear a bathrobe too big for one alone.
My close-up is not seductive. From three inches away I look
handled, full of downtown adventure, and nothing more.
My problem is, I need exercise.
I need to exercise my freedom.
I need men to exercise my freedom on—”

You need to exorcise more...

“Engineer, artist, ad exec,
dancer, scholar or schemer. Anyone
who makes me like myself again.”

Your real problem is you need to attract men but you don't care how you do it
since faithless men make you sorry afterwards which makes you glad, after all,
because then you are free.

“Am I really that wicked?”

Evil.

“Evil? What is evil? Isn't it evil, too,
when a man no longer makes sense, to stay? Isn't it wicked,
when I want to bicycle round the hubbub and bounce
wowee! bang! onto another banana performance,
not to?”

The mirror stares back, its hotel twang icy silent.

Stares and stares.

* * *

Staring indecisive before the mirror. The tabby cat eyes her, yawns. She shoos the fat thing out the door. Now, over the poster of Sigmund Freud she tacks a bath towel, fiesta red. The staring goldfish spooks as the bowl goes dark under matching hand towel. Then, coyly, she faces the mirror, begins to undress. Slowly, the thrift-rack Jordache jeanshorts. Slowly, the hot-pink leg warmers. Slowly, the notice-my-nipples tanktop and the soiled Dreamfit panties. Slowly, the imaginary strength and the petty anxious confusion about I and thou. Removed. She stands naked. Rubbing. Erasing the goosebumps. Erasing the magic she does not feel. Erasing the lip gloss, the jungle of eyeshadow, the traces of facial zaperizers that give a girl instant sanctum. Erasing discoloring memories and mistakes. All, to make room for loving generously.

She moves forward to warm herself by the mirror.

* * *

Canticle of a short skirt. Canticle of romantic glances, eyes asleep to simple weeping.

Because she hungers for love. Because deep inside she is a spring and longs to feed moisture to despairing surfaces. Because as a girl in order to make others happy she lived without imagination or passion.

Because grown now she drifts from liquid relation to liquid relation, pairing in parties of two, parting in lots of one. Because men are not seductive enough but shame suddenly away and she sometimes wants to squash them brown like roaches with her heel, a can lid, or a slammed telephone. Because she is only on leave from a lemon limbo. Because she must have some hugging, whether whole or hollowed out. Because the soul of her father's full voice echoes: “Go away, little girl. Go away...”

In the mirror, a little girl, sucking on a remorsicle. It has phallic implications. Her eyes narrow to hairless slits. Her psyche follows suit.

Outside, the streets fill the city. After an interval these streets narrow and proceed to a point. A tin can tips with a clatter.

* * *

She wears a moist face. Disrobing in the shadows gives her meaning. She faces the mirror, begins to undress.

Evil touches everything, but by its nature destroys nothing. Evil cannot undo what is inner, for what is inner is eternal. Does she know this? She tries to undo the knotted bathrobe belt. Fumbles to undo the eternal knot.

Below, in the shadows, a streetwalker and her client share a joint. Somewhere else, the miracle of life, seen through a torn window shade.

A tin cat craps with a clatter.

* * *

Because she hunts for love. What she was like under those lithe young limbs no one found out. Love bore her struggling through the city. Maya holds the city entangled so she must focus on continuity in the midst of decay and mystery. She focuses on her image in the mirror. She is naked.

* * *

In the mirror, a firing squad. Gratefully she accepts the blindfold from behind. But the priest who arrives is an old boyfriend, a ruffian who whispers fiercely, “Take it off! Take it off!”

* * *

Around her, a half-drunk world of laughter. But stability surrounds the breast image. Poetic symbols, they, that foam up full and translucent. From them the whole of existence fans out, to grow or die. She herself is born to struggle. She struggles with the skirt zipper

* * *

She sits in art class, mirror-minded, focusing on his genitals, zaniest-ever neurotic hypnotic sweet. Does pencil studies full of groovy details. Catches, in charcoal, the sleepy curve where the neck dongs out, the patient sag of the orchid sacs. At lunch break, to a hard rock wail, draws him fanning off his banana. Later, privately, her turn to pose. She lifts the black slip carefully till static crackles, blushes carefully pink, then...cuntinues.

* * *

She is still removing the evil, fumbling with the catch in back. Evil by its nature destroys nothing. Living in each is an everlasting center. But until we are consumed, the answer evades us. If only she could lift her arms and disappear as light. She has arms to fly and all color to fill herself in. She raises her arms, pulling the evil carefully off over her head. The hair is dry, flaxen, self-tangling. She wears nothing underneath. On all sides her body dangles over giddy space. The soul, far below, dashes itself on the black rocks

* * *

She studies the mirror. She sees she is the breasts, tiny and unknown. With despair born of practice she takes her palms, lifts the beating heart of the air in elevation. The mirror clouds mercifully. Outside, entombed in rainy spots, the overturned world. From a rough wall, bitter tears seep. Enigmas on every hand.

* * *

She studies all three views in the department store mirror. Adjusts the wing doors, turns this way and that, checking herself from every angle. She is naked. After days and days, she says to the salesclerk, softly: “I'll take it.”

* * *

“Who takes you seriously when you turn on? Who talks to you when you slow down? Living in each is an everlasting cancer. O love, free my soul, loose its winter bonds!” Her arms lift her swimming on whiskey kind of wings through the liquid air. In the mirror, she is caressing her nipples.

* * *

Wall photos, a parcel of kids carefully clothed in golden giggles. Pinned to her breast, a blaze of household honors. A tiny wedding picture, pledge of the Good Life, fades into a vaguely familiar oval— her face in the mirror.

* * *

She is inside me, facing the mirror in the uniform of her choice. She is big with child. Beady menacing flashes in the black of her child, nerves of razor resentment. She wants to give the child something she never had. What?

She is inside me as I write! Borne in on the arms of alpha waves. Borne in smelling of secrets of the Nile, big with child, big with mirror. Borne in to whisper dread messages in the middle of a city at noon. City big with too many lies. She is in the middle of my mind alive and well. Yes. A private well, deep and cool, and yet— a nude glowing spirit blond to the waist...

* * *

Once, blind to the waste. Poetic symbols wax translucent. She is the mirror rubbing out the lies. The mirror rubbing her eyes, rubbing in the morning, rubbing in the light. “Tell yourself you deserve this.” She faces out onto two tingling testicles. Poetic symbols aglow with pink pearl radiance, mirror of the beauty of her own breasts. She is a well-built blond full of iron pep, climbing hand over hand up a smooth, swift phallus. The earth soon is an overstuffed dirty dot twirling far beneath her. Grow or die. She wants her child to have everything she never had. As a girl, she was built empty, not like a boy. She is sick of the emptiness. Keeps climbing. Comets, fleet white ponies with voluminous scarves, amuse the dark.

* * *

Soon, she reaches where her ancestors crouch in a hamstrung world. Crouch and crack jokes to clear their throats, and conscience, all speaking at once:

“Black net panties produced a criminal like me.”
“It was cheap mill end cotton underwear did me in.”
“I was too poetic on top.”
“I went and put gin in his condom.”

Each has an insane grip on her hair. “Take it off, Cleopatra O'Connell! All off! You're made to be glimpsed!” They tear at her scalp shouting, “Don't fight! This is a family show.” The stench of excrement jams at her. These cave-dwellers live by a rough golden rule: who looks at it cleans it up. “All right! Little hand's on the panties, big hand is on the stump. Time to play WakeyUp! Time to wrench your senses! Snatch her!”

Howls. Farts. Fiendish yawns. The clock in the hall does the Wild West show. Shadows monster in and out. Feline shapes hook her hands. An oversized lovers' towel hoods her in fiesta red, shuts off all but imagination and passion. An elastic snap. Her arms are banded to her sides. “Give a hand here. Get in line. Hurry. We're going on a detour.”

She is pinned down, spreadeagled, displayed, the screams accumulating round her ears. She stares wide-eyed, straining to see through the terror. One of the cat shapes makes a move. It squats, shoves back on the fringed towel border. Fumes rise off its fangs. Its tail rises. Something plunges into her. Something fierce and warm and latex-soft sinks its contents into her infant. She cramps.

Then she is passing through a veil of white smoke. A churchbell chimes somewhere, warm and sweet. The air is fresh and salty. It is her first day of vacation. She can look down the beach and see one of her mothers waving. And dear Father is still very much alive. She pushes her feet deeper into the wet sand, and a cooling wave washes over them.

Then she spots a postcard bobbing on the sparkling water. She wades to it. “You are invited to play the fitness game...” Shading her eyes, she studies the green rolling waves and there, where the water turns darker, another postcard floats. She pushes towards it, her summer dress a cotton print blossom around her. She reads: “...the fitness game: the aim being more and more to play...” A third postcard still further off attracts her. She is neck-deep when she reads it. “...to play the fitness game...”

She yields to the cold undertow pushing at her heels, steps forward and sinks endlessly down, down into a region of reverie, where alpha waves wash gently clean. She is aware only that the sunlight coming through is cool and lambent and soothing to the eyes.

* * *

She is inside herself, facing a mirror. It is the single calm in a tidal wave of thoughts. She steps through and turns around. The mirror has clouded over. Mercifully. She sees only herself.

Outside, the streets fill the city. After an interval these streets narrow and proceed to a point. A think tank tips with a clatter.

* * *

Only darkness is left to deal with the profound riddle that all is well.