Fall 2006

The Faceless Doll
By Janice Robinette

After the hail storm broke my brother's bedroom window,
he hurdled my Barbie doll out between the glass shards,
spewing her body past our old wheelbarrow,
its bottom still littered with faceless pennies.
He cackled, then disappeared
inside his basement room-as if he were Narcissus-
sinking into his dark pool.
All summer I searched for Barbie,
lost in the field below the pink wall of our house-
left pock marked from the heavy hail-
just as we once left our footprints,
casting them inside a large, clay pit.
Late in the fall, amidst the vine maple's scarlet leaves,
I found my Barbie-lying next to our old, wooden fort-
an abandoned refrigerator box, turned upside-down,
that had filled with mud, and water snakes.
Weeds were sprouting from her cheeks,
like long eyelashes. They wove through her torso,
circling her ankles like a bracelet,
then wrapped around the roots of a quaking aspen.
They held her close-just as the limbs of a Douglas fir
once held me, and my childhood friends-
as we huddled together-listening to Lianne
as she gasped and quivered, and spoke of her dead father.
Barbie's head was twisted on backwards,
like my reflection-turned upside-down
inside a silver spoon. Her chipped face was smeared
in sap, and embedded with barbed wire.
Its black crosses looked like small bows
sewn to an elastic headband.
They pulled her to the ground,
as if she were a monarch butterfly-
pinned to a display board. Slowly, I lifted the barbed wire-
the way my doctor once lifted surgical screws
from my feet-and later-pressed them into my palm.
Barbie's hands were flayed-a laced veil
dancing amidst the shadows. Her arms reached towards me,
just as mine once reached for my mother's neck-
holding her close as she caressed my cheek.
Wheat grains fell from Barbie's skirt pocket,
like broken beads. I stitched her torn, silk hem,
and sprinkled her diadem with poison perfume.
I poured clear glue into her cracked seams,
and wrapped duct tape around her punctured feet.
I cut a lock of my walnut-colored hair,
glued the gold tincts to her grass-stained skull,
then covered her body in King's Crown white seashells-
ballooning them across her silk slip,
like a casted wedding gown.
I strummed each shell with my fingers,
and plucked at their ridges,
as if they were the embossed rings of a conifer.
I lowered Barbie onto a cushion of twigs,
then placed her inside a felt-lined box-
painted in purple tea cups.
I listened ... as the shells sang to me,
each one like a blown kiss-
joined together in a chorus of echoes.

 
 
"Album of My Father"
By Kristine Forbes
 
He brings himself down to our level, this trim young man, one khaki'd knee on the hard-packed dirt swept free of pine needles, and the other bent into a safety gate for me, the little girl in the pink dress with white sailor collar. His right arm rests at my younger sister's waist; her forearm rests lightly on his right hand. He leans toward us so that our three brown-haired heads are close. His left arm stretches from behind me out to the edge of the pond; his hand dangles a piece of bread for the pair of white geese that are eagerly eyeing it. Our little girl ears are just as eager for the soft flow of his words. The geese like bread, he might be telling us. Here's how you can get the geese to come. I know this man to be my father but his relaxed stance, his gentle, protective manner with us, I do not recognize.
        We're near the rim of Crater Lake. My father stands shirtless and tall, his hair beginning to thin, a soft roll of flesh developing at his waist. My older sister preens for the camera, leaning into my father with her right hand on his shoulder as if it were a ballet barre, her left hand on her hip, her elbow akimbo, her left leg lifted and her grin sassy. My younger sister and I stand in front of our father, our pixie-round heads up to the bottom of his chest. He rests one arm around my shoulders, the other around hers. My back leans against his leg. I am safe. The same trip: the five of us are in our white Buick sedan navigating a twisty mountain road. I have my face stuck out the rolled-down window. I am pleading with my father to stop the car, just until my nausea subsides. He refuses. "It's all in your head," he snaps, and continues down the road.
        At my husband's funeral I feel much younger than my 29 years. My sister's black dress fits me only approximately. The dime-sized buttons that close the dress in the back break free of their buttonholes if I hunch forward, which I cannot help but do. I sit in the front pew, my mother holding my right hand, my father my left, their heads each bent slightly toward mine although the top of my head reaches just beneath my father's earlobe. My brown hair falls to the neck of the dress, exposing the two empty buttonholes that are visible above the back of the nubby cloth-covered pew. When the soloist's words break me, I will turn to bury my head in my father's chest; he will wrap his arms around me as I sob. "Upon this rock, upon this rock, upon this rock…" My father, who three years prior walked me down the aisle of a different church, is here to take me back in this one.
        The gray-haired man bends over the blond toddler in striped romper and tiny white sneakers. The hair at the top of the man's head is thinning. The man's left hand supports his grandson's right arm; the man's right arm stretches in front of the boy's chest and gently stabilizes him with a hand under the boy's left armpit. The two are on a narrow wooden bridge across a small mountain stream. The boy's gaze is on the water, the man's is on the boy. Do you see the pretty fish in the water? he might be saying. Let's look at the pretty fish.