The Doll

Like dolls, the characters are lined up

in rows along the roads and shelves

of the world.



Some I want to take from their boxes

and make of them an innocent recreation,

a plaything.



Others—what it is, I cannot say—I leave

as they are, wrapped in some type of

packaging



Locked always in their sheen, their stock is

Becoming a burden to the stores,

stockpiling;



I pass these untouchables to find a doll

that suits this world of fantasy I

created,



one whose button eyes will really look at me

across the table, reflect the light but

take me in.



I roam the rows even as they are barely lit,

I learn of the features of the characters:

they can speak,



each with its peculiar drawl or dialect,

some speaking to please, others

just whining,



still others have a feature that would allow

these creatures to whisper to me

at playtime,



still others have the added virtue

of a voice with which to shout

at heaven.



Pressing a button on the outstretched palm

of each character to hear its voice,

a doll’s voice,



I realize there is nothing to be done

and take one home to share with me

its doll’s life.



This doll across the table has purple eyes,

but eyes nonetheless that stare at me,

speak to me.



I reach across to push her pillowy palms

to get her to speak; her left palm

makes her speak.



She tells me of life in the stores,

being shipped and shelved throughout

the bright earth.



There are places I saw, she says in her

doll’s voice, tinny and mechanical,

they were bright.



On the way to a toystore in Chicago,

while being wheeled up the ramp of its

grand staircase,



I looked across the highway to the river,

the running water and running people,

the babies



Pushed along in strollers by fleshy mothers,

I looked at this and almost cried, but

I can’t cry.



The way the light dressed them, the light

played with them, the light was unpackaged,

brilliant stuff.



Her getting close to poetry in those phrases,

in her doll phrases, programmed,

has me beam.



I ask her about the other dolls, why there

were so many and such various characters

on the shelves.



She must be pressed again, the left hand,

before continuing, voice programmed

for sadness,



There are dolls that no one will touch

because the fabric, the material,

it feels off.



I reach across to touch her and feel

the plushness of her body, its down

and texture.



Her voice begins to sound frail—

I wonder whether I have to change her

batteries.



She goes on, Each doll is different,

you know that; the history of the doll,

the doll’s deeds.



One doll I met in a gift shop off the

Kansas Turnpike, she murdered

her siblings,



She left them lifeless in their rooms—

each one was given a room—spread the cotton

everywhere.



She pouts her singsong voice, blinks the

eyes that cannot cry, looks at me again

then goes on,



If you ever travel to Kansas, exit 93A off

the turnpike, you will see her dark hair,

crystal skin,



her appearance charming, her dress sharp,

but dangling there alone on a hook next

to pliers.



Another doll is in a warehouse for a shop

on the internet; he has the most lively

music box



Which would play a rambling tune for you

if he were not in that dark place, playing

all alone.



Another doll is at the dark bottom of a lake

in Arizona; she fell from a girl’s

swimming hands.



The fish, I was told, every now and then

kiss the algae from her seams,

they clean her.



I ask her why it took so long for her

to be purchased, why she was still

dangling there



She tells me not to worry, then looks me

in my brown with her purple eyes, she

drops a tear,



A tear from her ductless eye, then more.

She hooks my empathy with her

real wet cries.



I lunge across the table to hold her,

to vow never to let go, and

cry with her.