Book of Dolls 5
The psychoanalyst has left the building
to the lost, foreclosed, secluded life,
indiscernible at night from nights
that have no evidence of life in them.
Only dolls, castaways who stare
at one another, as if each were a wall.
You want to ask where a doll ends,
the wall begins. You are not alone.
There is always a little of the living
in a corpse, a nonsense in the deference
of whispers beneath a casket and a cross.
You wave a hand over sculpted eyes,
and it does not feel like you, not you,
in the black of the glass, waving back.
Book of Dolls 10
When my mother died, an elephant came
to the family table, where my brother,
sisters, and I divided our inheritance,
and I remembered the animal as the toy
I got one Christmas, but then, my brother
said the gift was his, so too my sisters,
and with my mother’s ghost, we were all
looking at one beast, each with a different
narrative and sadness. And the toy
sat speechless. Then silently went home
with someone. I don’t remember who.
The day was far too full. With every item
laid to rest on the table, my brother said
remember this. And our faint reply, I do.
