It's a very fragile sight to see a preadolescent girl who
knows how to--
is still learning the ways of looking older,
trying to act older and whatnot.
And this is a poem about that kind of masking
and the fragility of the masking of the self.
The title of the poem is "At St. Hubie's Altar."
St. Hubie's is St. Hubert's.
It's a church in North Philadelphia.
And the setting is a viewing, a funeral viewing.
"At St. Hubie's Altar."
"The effort of it, the Egyptian teenage princess look.
Crushed cinnabar blush, the surprised large mouth
her brown lip liner draws, gelled tresses ribbed
across the runway shoulders.
So many modeling classes to craft a seeable self, pencil
skirt at sixteen and high-heeled sandals that snagged
the casket's red carpet.
Tripped toward the aunt she never liked,
who disliked her because she never listened to nobody
and acted like she owned the world.
She weirdly seemed to want to fall inside and be
with that blanched life, but someone gathered her
and seined her back to us.
How she must hate that visage in her vanity mirror, the silly
earnest child, face banged up by tears,
who can't even help herself, who drools and bites her hair."