the paper bag
and the hole where the face goes
the mask that shows just one type of smile
or glows with an absent fury;

my paper bags I put on countertops
to hold the bits of fruit the one-armed man has sold me,
much smaller than the ones I used

to hide myself inside, the ones I wore
as governess of our broken palace,
trumpeting the slateways of my pulp kingdom.

I think of what I’ll do when I am whole and dying
and have littered so many masks across the desert,
floating like the leaves that brushed my face—

the ones that still crinkle and unfold themselves under
grocer’s fingertips, and those two empty eye holes—but a frame
that craves   and craves     and craves.