The Dolls' Boneyard

[a reading from the Book of  "boo"

to be read in various voices in a mildly spooky way...]

you may be haunted and you won’t know why

much farther down the lane

by a little voice that cries: oh not a calico dress again;

I wanted red velvet for Christmas and a silk plaid sash.

and on a corn-husk wind with berry-dyed cheeks something

will sigh and sigh again oh, for a shock of red-orange hair

yarn-looped, and shoe-button eyes… 

and someone speaking porcelain and breaking your stride

will delicately trip you for hiding her under the stairs too long that afternoon, the captive princess, still

when you didn’t finish that play.

so here we are: cornered by the sun-burned

without their sun-bonnets...

and quaking for what the dolls forgot to say

when they were new.

mary angela douglas 31 august 2013