Kevin Young

You know, news of a cousin shot, an uncle's body found in a wrecked car.

There's this ominousness lurking behind this simple act.

And even in the beginning, a command reception in the dictator's honor.

That must have been really powerful to realize that that was sort of the backdrop of this simple act.

Right.

But they all feel real.

I think it's faces, plural, of course, that you conjure up in just a few phrases.

Faces I knew by heart, gauging her moods, the daily weather of her expressions, like a bankrupt farmer watching the rain clouds bank.

I love that.

These two uses of bank, bankrupt and banking physically.

That's so beautiful.

And there's a kind of sense of play, but also in the service of something really serious, colored and covered up, brushed over, you know, almost kind of that notion of surfaces, but also that, are they hiding or, you know, the truth, or are they sort of ways of getting into the truth or guarding oneself, girding oneself to face the truth?

which is, you know, a very haunting image.

But I think there's also that moment where the eye sees their own face cupped in their hands in the mirror.

A really well done, you know, kudos, you're a brilliant writer at this.

So to, in one image, sort of show the way that the face is being reflected, the self is, you know,

imagining but also is going to grow up to share this face in some way and to share this mirror, memory's mirror, as you put it.

But I love the title.

I mean, the title, Mommy at Her Vanity, both the sort of rhyme that's there and then also, of course, this idea of her being vain as well as the vanity that we know or maybe we don't know, but learn really quickly what it is.

That three-paneled quality, it's kind of past, present, and future in some way as well.