For years the Mirror reported her doings
With every appearance of respect:
What is the Wicked Queen wearing tonight?
Where did she buy her adorable shoes?
How large are her sapphires? How rare
Her pearls? Girls throughout the realm
Would lap it up, gazing in their lesser
Mirrors to see themselves in royal attire,
Diadems of diamonds replacing buns
And braids. Her teeth and décolletage
Were the envy of women half her age,
Whose compact mirrors would whisper:
Crone, you’d seem chiseled of the same Parian,
With a milder soap, a better dentifrice.
Try these. Buy this. Inhale her fragrance.
Industries sprang up like bramble. Families
Grew rich from the sale of ribbons and laces,
Enhancers and foundation creams,
Hosiery and bras, as consumers, enchanted,
Near and far, lavished endearments
On softer skin, more sparkling eyes.
In Bogotá, in Marrakesh, among the Slovaks
And the Esths, the face of the distant
Sovereign began to melt and coalesce
With the faces of all women fair and rich:
Movie starlets, heiresses, cruel
Dictatrices, anchorwomen, teen murderesses
Able to sell their tales to Hollywood.
In powders and vials the Wicked Queen’s
Essence was suffused like a scentless gas
Throughout her realm, democratizing
Vanity. Ah, but still, insatiate,
She sits before her Mirror and crimson lips
Tense in a smile to ask her confidante
Who is fairest of them all, and still the lips
In the silvered glass reply, “Thou, Majesty, thou.”
The Lipstick on the Mirror
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