In the Permanent Collection

Compact Mirror

49 COMPACT MIRROR So kind through jostlings and rough use with gum wrappers and pennies at the bottom of my bag. I accept the modest compass of your reflections, the circle that holds the mouth and part of the chin or just one eye and temple. Thank you for this partitioning, for vision that doesn’t force wholeness, unwilling to look at the entire face, which defies our best attempts to interpret it. A movie director says the close-up shot always works because we can’t get enough of looking at human faces. They never come forward to our desire, entirely readable—as Warhol knew, with his hours of audition tapes. The subject left alone, film rolling, for too long to pose would eventually tire or get bored, relax, and appear to forget the camera. Then I get nervous, watching for her tics or jitters. So much easier to look at his Marilyns. Seeing her portraits I expect, if I can look hard enough, to find some correspondence, her face emerging as emblem of what she wanted and why. Of course this will never happen. Open my eyes while kissing and I get your point: what we see does not disclose, no matter how we want it to. Knowing love makes most sense when it’s too close to look at, we’re no less captive to the face we hold between our hands. How kind, the moment’s relief of compulsion, your refusal even to return 50 vanity’s eye. Thank you, at last, for the hinge that closes you in on yourself, the complaisance with which you go back into the purse. ...