1.
Grandma dreams the doll
follows her room to room begging
her to please part her fused fingers
so that she might braid her own yellow hair or
squeeze a boy's thumb or sing into a stick
or slap a pretty face, fingers so that she might cradle
a daughter who surely could not fall
if she had knuckles and thumbs to hold her right.
Oh, what she might have done with the proper
hands, Grandma dreams all night.
2.
Thirteen dolls
1. sunburst retinas dilate with love
2. wooden clogs on her little feet ships to hold drunk sailors
3. pee hole, eye hole, eye hole, mouth hole. Glycerin tears the soap stars cry
4. Uncle Ed buries her in the yard up to her chin, mows around her for
weeks, warns the retards next door that's them, they step one foot on his grass
5. fasten me lace me snap me braid me button me off we go
6. Grandma promises the absent grandchild the doll with the Fuller brush
lashes, the stuck- open eyes
7. the absent child of the absent grandchild
8. the stray cat swells to a pear at the door
9. Mi Amor says the flamenco dancer with the parenthesis spine bent into the lover who
wooed her singing under the balcony of my glass shelf
10. push the button in the back and pull the hair and that's the sound of my
father's fishing reel reeling in the snag at the end of the line
11. three slack strings of the sitar. pigeon toes. hair like cobwebs. the
powdered face of the women the sailor loved over seas.
12. seven girls on army cots crying
13. Barbie suns on top of the Dream-van, dreams mortgage, foot-rub, fences
like shining rows of teeth
3.
Birthday card and clipping
HER "NEW DOLL"--Ten-year-old Hortensia Gomez Juan cuddles "my new doll," a
4-pound, 7-ounce son born to her in Jalapa, Mexico. The mother and baby,
born in a normal birth, are doing fine. Police said a wealthy neighbor, who
hired the girl as a servant several months ago, had been arrested on
charges of child violation.
Dear granddaughter I hope
you have a nice birth
day I wish I could be their
with all of you well you will be
a grown woman do you have
a boy friend out their I no
you will hate to leave him
oh well they are plenty boys
here but none is good all on
dope they are kiling people and
raping night and day I never
go out at night when you
stay here I will lock the
windows you are the
prettiest girl like a doll (if your Mom
forgets to get me a little flower plant you
get me one) I close with lots of love
Your Grand M a