2023 Lois Cranston Memorial Poetry Prize First Runner-Up

Ode to Bathroom Mirror Altars I’ve Built for Myself

I’m moving back east to a basement studio that barely holds my furniture, but you know what? It’s got a closet just for my makeup. The bathroom lighting is exquisite. I know. It’s hardly an upgrade, but the planet is on fire. I’d rather stay inside loving myself at the medicine cabinet, glowing tiers of glass potions and indulgences and there I am: the patron saint of queer brown femmes in my cold sepulcher painting myself to life so I can stomp into the day and silently tell the world not to fuck with me. My eyebrows are Disney villain pointy for a reason. I can do them on the train, forget a mirror. My hands are steady like a bass line from all my practice in foggy compacts and bumpy bus rides. Listen, I’m downsizing. I leave my small vanity near the alleyway its surface scuffed by bobby pins and blunts rolled in pink paper, from acrylic towers of mocha lipsticks less than half a shade apart. I’ll miss my vanity, but I don’t need it. No one can tell if you get ready curved over a single stall sink with a spiderweb mirror or if you beat your face beatified in ring light flanked by cherry perfect studio bulbs sitting in a wingback chair in tufted blush velvet. This is about the finished product: big reveals with feather fans shimmying. I silently thank my vanity for its service, but it was never made for a gay millennial femme. A woman says to me you’ll outgrow all of that but I know the truth: to me, every painted lashline is a landscape. Every brushstroke on my face is an ancient ritual in repetition, so the next time I’m flush with cash, I’m buying booze, lights, plus more lipstick. I’m going out screaming in full glam. Rita Mookerjee is an Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Worcester State University. She is the author of False Offering (JackLeg Press 2023). Her poems can be found in the Baltimore Review, New Orleans Review, the Offing, Poet Lore, and Vassar Review.