Lipsticks

A Sestina

Tonight, I am Sylvia staring at the crescent moon of my lips
On a beer can. I am a woman, and I am the trace of a woman. 
My grandmother taught me this, how to be a skidding crayon of self, 
On the cigarette, cheek, fork. We must be harder to wash off, difficult 
To unstain in all ways. And for what? To be a poem? Maybe I have wanted 
Womanhood to be a poem, but it has been lipsticks. 

When I was four, I pulled my mother’s compact and lipstick 
To my chest and held them there with terror. My lips 
Needed what my mother’s lips needed. My face wanted
Anything that would change it. What did I think it was to be a woman?
I had no idea, but it began with this abduction and assault made difficult
Only by my unskilled hand. When I looked up, I was no longer there. A self

Erased, a woman smeared in. She was herself, 
“Iced Mauve Shimmer.” The whole world stuck to her lips.
I didn’t know if I loved her, but I knew she was no longer as difficult
To love. I needed the plot of my life to be heard from these lips,
Because I needed the plot of my life to be heard from these lips, a woman’s. 
If a wild girl gags herself in the bathroom for wanting

To be heard, no one will hear her pick up the fake tortoiseshell, wanted
On every makeup aisle in America. If a wild girl emerges from the bathroom a self-
Made woman she hates but who is desired, she has proved herself a woman. 
I came a long way from home to put on a color of lipstick
No man I’d ever kissed in Alabama could see or read. I asked my lips
To become as elusive as the sea, as distant and difficult

As any country would let a woman artist be distant and difficult.
And they did, in the poems where I write about women who do what they want.
And they do, in the poems where I write about women who paint their lips
With two minds. But going away did not quiet the gnaw of self 
Nor did it cure the incurable repetition of lipsticks.
How did I let myself become a glossy woman? A matte-finish woman? 

Or aren’t I a high-intensity, long-lasting go fuck yourself woman?
I have not always wanted a shade. I have wanted to be difficult
To name. I have not wanted to inherit lipsticks,
But I have. I have watched my mother up-close and from afar and wanted
Still to see her face pronounce itself in mine. I have blotted her off and hated myself
For this effacement more than my own. Tonight, this story is the story slipping

Down the beer can, as a woman slips from my lips,
As a girl slips open a lipstick, as a color skids like an affirmation of self
Across a poem with two minds and a life difficult but wanted.