The Heirlooms
The Heirlooms
by halifax
Bald-headed dolls,
Supposedly immune to time,
Had their glass eyes taken out
With a screwdriver
And are now lost.
The best doll sits
In a hole filled in with dirt
It plays house to sleeping imagoes
In their pupal casings
Snuggled inside
The pouty porcelain head.
The newest one,
Naked and in pieces
Hidden like lizard eggs
Under soft leaves and loam,
Can be found if sought
Throughout the fabric of the yard.
Her mother had told her mother
Thinking it might pain her
But she just shrugged
And said that it was okay,
They had been hers to play with
However she’d wanted.
They were just dolls after all.
It takes a real man with hair on his chest to admit that he plays with dolls. I have a lot of respect for you. Since you came out of the closet…, well,.. i play with dolls too. Or i used to, that is. I used to have G.I. Joes, superheroes batman, spiderman, and even an Evil Knevil you could put on a stuntcycle and wind up the gears on this special contraption and let him go off the roof of the trailer house.
But i’m a Bedinsky…Dolls as a metaphor to ourselves, you can’t help thinking it. ..Or are you the little Ivan with the screwdriver? Just kiddin’. Perhaps we treat others like our dolls sometimes–maybe not as good or worse like playthings. The culture of roleplaying and imagination is a ghastly expanse into psychodrama of our world-outlooks thru a 50 cents a pop telescope.
Thanks man. Poem! i might join the blow-up doll of the month club too, now…that might be interesting…’la-di-da’…later.
“Pupal” has a double meaning. In latin the root means both doll and girl. An imago also has a double meaning. I am comparing the imagined permanent parent-adult that stays fixed in a child’s mind with the permanent child represented in a doll.
I have four sisters, and two teenage daughters. I have played many times with girls and dolls. I was more Krutschina than Little Ivan to my sisters.
There is a gifting of roles that only occurs at parenthood. With the title “The Heirlooms”, I use the metaphor of a doll collection passed from grandmother to granddaughter to highlight that rite. The purpose of this poem is to offer an understanding of the latent impulse to have children. Dealing with that impulse has been a reoccurring theme in my life.
Apologies, sir. Here you are writing a serious poem and i’m being a goofy ass.
I’m glad you explained some of poem. Actually, i thought ‘imagoes’ was typo of intended ‘images’…very good with the double meanings. …and metaphors. –Always well thought-out and deeply conceived. If i didn’t know any better, i’d think you were trying to know yourself or had a natural curiosity about the nature of things.
nota bene: kids are indeed a blessing.