A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry

The Facial Reconstructionist has Cocktails with the Girls

344 A Face to Meet the Faces The Facial Reconstructionist has Cocktails with the Girls Jacqueline Jones LaMon I’ve always had this thing for clay, to cup my hands around a sphere, allow my fingers’ strength to grope toward definition. I know there is an art to this, despite the grayness of my walls. When the cranial remains lie in state before me, I play The Lark Ascending, let my mind know dawn and flight. Vaughan Williams and I mold the timing of rise, the hover preceding the soar. After work, my girlfriends ask no questions of me. They stare at my hands, inspect my cuticles for hangnails and fingernails unkempt, survey the end of the bread that I touch. They don’t ask how I can wade my way through gore, question unclaimed bones, mold parentheses around a flesh I’ll never know. This victim was a man-child. I contemplate tissue thickness near his nasal spine, the skin shade I will choose, the social construction of race. I have another Cosmo. I think about his eyes. ...