Master & Servant: Mask

          Oh! How foul a thing, that we should see the tongue of one animal
          in the guts of another.           —Leonardo Da Vinci, The Notebooks, 1295    



More than me, twice, I am.
I am inside the mask made of blue corn husks.
Where else
can I begin in such significance, my own worn element?

Bend need to demand; rust the hours.
Acquiesce our duplicate pleasure,—corruptible
as incorrigible. This is only

the appearance of confinement, insolent and lacquered.
What we have wanted from each other
all along: an inseparable, same face.
Our vanity is irrational.

Wake me. Tell me what to do with myself in the dark.
Our life is made of words. The world obeys
no apology. Here

I demand your full attention
and a tied locket of your hair.

Your being, my nothing.




Mask of Roses


          I recall the rosetree that sprang from my breast.
          I recall the myriads of birds in the cage of my head.
          I recall my third finger the branch of the myrtle,
          I recall the imprisoned women wailing in my bowels.
          I was the figure of the Surrealist Exhibition
          With the mask of roses face...              

                                                             —George Barker



Face first, unfailing, frail, the mask is a step back from thinking. No one blooms
until someone else responds.  See, like so many small red fists, but softer, like my love's
opened sex. Before-sleep roses. Petals’ weave one wave at a time, not me, me. Flesh
of my skin reenacted in an outburst of red and lavender. Embroidery bloom, the unearthed
face and then the buried face, mourned for. The blossoming, as in beginning, stopped by
being seen, blossoming to be plant again, all breathing. To take up all the air in the room.
After its impression coloring the gaze, perfuming the passing glance, the mask will wither.
I am what might happen, the subjunctive mood everyone wants to be in. If truth be part
of every garden, grown along the path, short-lived. Implied in silence, I am unexpected
by you, mask of new pleasure not lasting. Opening. See my misnomer, mask of me now
seeing you. Alone with my rose, little consequence by any other name, carried by this
face, so many roses for beauty, mixed Dog with fiction, written into history for many
a king, queen and one Mary, Moss, Daily, China, Musk, Burgundy, White, infidelity
Yellow and in the extant version, here in a gallery of onlookers, plain. See with the eyes,
see with a question, with a hand that nothing induces it to seize, such mediocrity,
masquerade, mine. Transformed, I am not transformed but what you knew all along.
Now: flowery kingdom of the face, rose mask made for a world of mixed messages.
To desire to press mine to yours. Skin/petal, petal/skin. To lean with the light.
Smell. Roses face to your face. To lose this, thinking, my human means.

Elena Karina Byrne is a teacher, visual artist, Poetry Moderator and Consultant for the LA Times Festival of Books, and former 12 year Regional Director of the Poetry Society of America. She has served as Poetry Consultant to the Getty Research Institute (GRI) and curated the poetry reading series at The Getty Center. This year she will also run the reading series for USC's Doheny Memorial Library, and The Ruskin Art Club/Red Hen Poetry Series. Her many recent publications, among others, include,  The Paris Review, The Yale Review, Chelsea, Verse,   American Poetry Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, Colorado Review, Prairie Schooner, Painted Bride Quarterly, Denver Quarterly, Volt, Hotel Amerika, The Journal, Nimrod,   Poetry Daily: 366 Poems from the World's Most Popular Poetry Website and The Anthology of Magazine Verse & Yearbook of American Poetry. Elena is a seven-time Pushcart Prize nominee who has won awards from the Academy of American Poets, The Chester H. Jones Foundation and the Kudzu Poetry Prize.  Her first book, The Flammable Bird is available from Zoo Press (zoopress.org). She is completing another, Masque and a collection of essays on poetry and contemporary culture entitled, Poetry and Insignificance. Elena is working with Red Car Studios on a Poetry Clip/Motion Picture Project: “Face Value.”    

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