WATCHING MY FACE PASS BETWEEN STREETS REFLECTED IN THE BUS WINDOW

by Kitty Tooher

I focus my attention on my nose--
   plump and exhausting with each
   stop,
echoing the motion of the wheels
   over the trolley tracks
lulling to the movement and losing
   the coming and going of
   passengers
I shake myself to reality and wonder
 
how would I look
with a slender nose
jutting off of my face?
 
at 9a.m.
fighting February on the front line
   with the first frost settling
this schnoz has defined me for many
   snow storms
standing there awkwardly
stuck out ahead of me
almost offensively far
between the brim of scarf and curl
pudgy and bulbed
it flares in constant to my quips on
   cold and frost
echoes my sentiment in its blushed
   inches
I gasp a breath
then another
have I spent the past twenty-seven
   years watching my nose
without ever understanding its
   power?
 
a woman boards on Ellsworth and
   stares at me uncomfortably
as I stare at her nose,
stuck in the middle of the confusion
   of her face
like a clothespin stuck to a pumpkin
I could never have this nose
it would never suit me
are there monuments to noses?
am I just scraping the surface when I
   focus on aesthetics?
an entire poem for this?
 
in the distance the most important
   sense is knocking
the one that reminds me how my
   mother smelled when I was seven
how velvet smells in a smoking bar
how sweat can smell perfect in the
   dark
how bibles reek of guilt
and I think,
while tracing my nose
undetectably in public,
you are the Taj Mahal of my face
a dedication to plump and beauty
eighth wonder
above the heave of breast and waist
I will always feel off because of you
adding valleys to my cheeks,
shade to my eyes
still, you are perfect
the way my favorite thing that's kind
   of broken is
the way my relatives are
the way my pinky toe is after
   summer '92
still, you are perfect