My last doll is dead.
I made it with a porcelain face
and body
A petticoat, a pinafore
I was trying to play
by the rules, play
pretend
but the porcelain became flesh
The doll stood up on its little legs
flexed its newly-made hands
grabbed at my hem
Its clean blue eyes looked straight into mine
I made an enormous prayer for it and recited it to the sky
I held my hands still
averted my eyes
Every one of me
cried
Then
the watcher
in the cortex
pronounced the doll dead
It lay on its back
eyes no longer
looking
Someone in the right hemisphere
tried dreams in lurid 3D
The doll in a locked basement
sitting in tears on a metal shelf
among cartons of yellowed papers
But truth
is truth. My last doll
is dead. If I ever make another
it will not be a doll but something real.
I will have no more dolls,
no more Frankenstein creations.
Dead
the doll is weirdly heavy
I lay it in a ten-inch plywood box
Nail down the lid
A place for everything …
Maybe I can put the dead doll box
in the bottom of the cupboard with my dress shoes
No
I might want to wear the shoes again
one day
Maybe I can bury the dead doll box
in the garden
No
I want to sit there
see things grow
Maybe I can take the dead doll box
deep into the smoothpale tallness
of the wandoo forest east of the city
Dig its grave alone and weeping
among granite outcrops
and prickly dryandra
No
The ground there is hard
Maybe I can burn
the box, the body
To generate enough heat
I’d have to pile up all my books
my laptop my albums my guitar
sweet-and-sour power chords
skin-and-sweat backbeats
The sounds and all the words
all the worlds and certainly my dress shoes
My whole goddamn wardrobe
Douse it with petrol and
torch it
I’d glide away airy and lucent
like the music of Mozart or Haydn
Sunlit
diatonic
clear
The music of the Enlightenment
Of thinking
you have
the answer
Glide away lucent, a cellophane sheet
ready to be blown by the next breeze
wrap around the next gift
No
I would still be this bone and meat
these earthbound feet
I would find the box charred in the ashes
the doll intact
the dead eyes still blue …
Neither earth nor fire will do. I must
unbox the doll
sling it on my back
and walk
Leave the city, its little forest
Venture off the hem of the map
Discover the river coiled in the cleft
of the valley at the root of heaven and earth
Wake the grandmother who sleeps there
She will bathe the dead doll in the water
invite the winds to toss its hair
++++(like this like this)
carry its weight up a mountain (like this)
leave it exposed to be stripped by carrion birds
++++(like this like this)
and let its bones rest heavy
++++(come birds)
for as long as memory
lasts
From A coat of ashes
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