Chrome Skull Face Mask

Stare hard enough at the fabric of night,   

and if you're predisposed to dark—let’s say   

the window you’ve picked is a black

postage stamp you spend hours at,

sleepless, drinking gin after the I Love   

Lucy reruns have gone off—stare

like your eyes have force, and behind

any night’s taut scrim will come the forms   

you expect pressing from the other side.   

For you: a field of Half Chrome Skull Neoprene Face Masks, angled jaws

and eye-sockets, a zillion scooped-out crania.   

They’re plain once you think to look.

You know such fields exist, for criminals

roam your very block, and even history lists   

monsters like Adolf and Uncle Joe

who stalk the earth’s orb, plus minor baby-eaters   

unidentified, probably in your very midst. Perhaps   

that disgruntled mail clerk from your job

has already scratched your name on a bullet—that’s him   

rustling in the azaleas. You caress the thought,

for it proves there’s no better spot for you

than here, your square-yard of chintz sofa, hearing   

the bad news piped steady from your head. The night   

is black. You stare and furious stare,

confident there are no gods out there. In this way,   

you’re blind to your own eye’s intricate machine   

and to the light it sees by, to the luck of birth and all   

your remembered loves. If the Half Chrome Skull Neoprene Face Masks are there—

let’s say they do press toward you

against night’s scrim—could they not stare

with slack jawed envy at the fine flesh

that covers your scalp, the numbered hairs,   

at the force your hands hold?

Mary Karr, “Field of Skulls” from Viper Rum. Copyright © 1998 by Mary Karr.