different mold

  Clay stretches over the styrofoam

  store model head, like cheap surgical gloves

  snapped over doctor’s hands, giving birth

  to thick lips and defiant brows, a proud

  forehead and two hills below sightless eyes.

  My thumbs dig ridges into her cheekbones,

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  extra flesh stripped off, a savage sacrifice

  to the pugmill gods for future resurrection.

  She stares out at me until I seal her eyes shut,

  encasing my fleshy fears as she enters the kiln.

  Adorned with a mountain range of gears

  raising from her forehead like a mechanical crown.

  1950° F. She is sweating, becoming stone—

  now a mangled corpse on an altar of clay.

  Her eyes lying beside her nose, a cheekbone

  resting in a premature grave. But there she is again,

  ashy white as though recovering from a sickness

  but unbroken, a techo queen, crown untouched.