Keeping Time with Blue Hyacinths: Poems

At the Temple of Bloomingdale

At the Temple of Bloomingdale The woman behind the Smashbox counter, says my face is all wrong; that I must wear eyeliner thick and black, never let the lines wander off without meeting; compliments my bone structure but calls my coloring “monochromatic”— brown hair, brown eyes, brown eyebrows. Brown nipples too, I say. She brushes emerald shadow on my lids, outlines my eyes with purple, her face so close to mine, I note how the blue, the brown and the gold are blended to code on her lids, how her eyebrows are drawn with a pencil, then powdered to stay. She surveys my pores from beneath a large magnifying glass, counts my wrinkles, clucks her tongue, asks if I use a toner, brings out bottles and jars guaranteed to smooth cracks, fill in the lines. When I leave I am poor and look like the whore of Babylon. 50 ...