The No-face Man

The time we saw the No-Face Man
in an episode of Ripley’s,
our hearts wanted to scream No.
This was too much, too horrible.
Not at all like the two-legged dog
prancing on the lawn towards its master,
still happy for all its strangeness,
or the tiger man covered in tattoos
from his eyelids down to his penis.
The No-Face Man lacked bone, lips.
On his face, just a dark
hairy bowl of emptiness
you’d mistake for eviscerated
coconut shell, the meat
all gone, only the husk
left for what? For a corner in a
museum? That night we lay in bed
holding on to each other, silent but
thinking of the No-Face Man together.
Could he still eat? How did he breathe?
If he had no mouth, where did his
wife kiss him? Was it true you could put a fist
in the hole in his face? And, of course,
hovering above us both: Why
did he choose to live?
That’s the part we couldn’t quite believe.
For if bread mold ate our faces
like it did his, no doubt
we would readily choose death,
forget that each of us had the other
than live knowing we had no eyes,
no nose to smell or sneeze with,
no tongue to register bitterness or sweetness,
like those clusters of Guess-Who puzzles
in celebrity magazines,
head figures with question marks on their faces
waiting to be filled.
Die than live looking like a monster,
for, if truth be told, he looked like a monster,
though we didn’t want to call him that,
though we preferred to think of him
as an unfinished drawing,
already imagining
ourselves in his place.
The next day we didn’t eat bread,
fearing disease.
But I bought you a shirt for no clear reason,
and you got me the book I’d always wanted,
each one buying love for that human wonder,
the No-Face Man
who already haunted our lives and grinned
his non-existent grin in our mirrors.