Dolls

Plastic people pose, contorted at the joints –
somehow limp – in the red chairs;
hardly different from their posture.
Demented forms positioned,
left unmoving – frozen, composed –
somehow moved – not physically,
mentally – by the picture scenes
across the television flicker:
electrostatic singing newscasters,
maybe some preset channel
changed by the nurses –
with their oddly kept faces:
painted ovals accented by curved crescent
lips. Crimson where they pinch in the corners:
pretense of a smile lifting sliced moon pieces
into separate slivers. How the movement
shows white marbles – teeth – too straight
to be real without smearing the sticky red.
Then again, we weren't natural either.



Remembering Pembroke

My bitter lips like teeth on tongue of truth,
or shuttered eyes against the trace, of scream
marquee, the playback loop of life. It sang
with hollow looks of patients' faces, new
with dipping valleys, puckered lids like wounds
with sleepless sanity. The jaundice flesh
of corpses, shriveled, burning bright among
the swallowed look of dying children caged
by skin, so taut from devouring bodies whole.



My Roommate in Pembroke Hospital

Singing silhouette atop the bureau;
teetering talons swaying sideways,
somewhat willowy,
the Ladybird on her perch.
Pretty birdy batting lashes,
featherless wings folded –
crooked like her grin,
murmuring riddled rhyme
of the Hatter's hypothetical lines,
flapping uselessly –
Ladybird, beaked girl in her cage.