Selections from Kinky
by Denise Duhamel
In Chicago a Barbie
loses her arm. Only the boy next door knows he has taken it
to use as a toothpick. A little girl
refuses to throw that Barbie away
and knots her doll's right sleeve
that hangs limp like a sail on a breeze-less day.
Another Barbie in Seattle has a run-in
with a German Shepherd
who leaves her face as scarred
as Marla Hanson's. It would be easy
for a child to cry for another doll,
but this little girl suffers
from bouts of eczema on her forehead.
She knows Barbie is still the same underneath.
In Baton Rouge, Barbie's hand melts into a finger-less fist,
a nob, when someone leaves her on top of a stove.
In Missoula, Montana, a baby sister cuts off most of Barbie's hair
not realizing it won't grow back.
Creative mothers invent slings and casts, flattering hats.
Our impulse to destroy what is whole,
to coddle and love what we have injured.
Suspected, Bravely Battles the Interrogation of
the Pentagon Task Force Who's Captured Her
You won't find it. Fascism comes to countries
wrapped in flags of freedom
as I come to Earth, minus evidence
of an umbilical cord. Expecting someone green?
Someone a little taller perhaps? Disguised
as the astronaut-bride-rock singer-pilot,
I've practiced friendly interplanetary voodoo,
fooling you all since my birth in 1959.
I won't bear children but instead will spawn sideways
until every one of your world-citizens knows who I am.
At this very moment, little girls are whispering their woes
into my hollow solar plexus.
And I am listening, taking notes, then reporting to my sources
who are planning an Earth girls' emancipation.
I guess you're right--I do have the cheery deception
of one planning a surprise birthday party.
But you yourselves have written in government handbooks
that a new authority can only move in
when current rulers neglect a majority of their citizens.
So even as you twist my arm so hard
that I confess, my alien plan remains perfect.
How can you, grown men, take me, a mere toy, seriously?
Especially when my cherry red nail polish
clashes with my fuchsia paisley spaceship.
like Linda Blair in "The Exorcist".
Her bare high-heeled feet were begging to be nailed,
Jesus-style, to a cross. Mothers saw their daughters' dolls
levitate above pink carrying cases, then tip upside down, arms
straight out to their sides.
Barbie's an angel, cried the little girls who loved her,
who would mortgage their souls to be like her,
who would do anything she asked.
Barbie squeezes the small opening under her chin
over Ken's bulging neck socket. His wide jaw line jostles
atop his girlfriend's body, loosely,
like one of those nodding novelty dogs
destined to gaze from the back windows of cars.
The two dolls chase each other around the orange Country Camper
Unsure what they'll do when they're within touching distance.
Ken wants to feel Barbie's toes between his lips,
take off one of her legs and force his whole arm inside her.
With only the vaguest suggestion of genitals,
all the alluring qualities they possess as fashion dolls,
up until now, have done neither of them much good.
But suddenly Barbie is excited looking at her own body
under the weight of Ken's face. He is part circus freak,
part thwarted hermaphrodite. And she is imagining
she is somebody else--maybe somebody middle class and ordinary,
maybe another teenage model being caught in a scandal.
The night had begun with Barbie getting angry
at finding Ken's blow-up doll, folded and stuffed
under the couch. He was defensive and ashamed, especially about
not having the breath to inflate her. But after a round
of pretend-tears, Barbie and Ken vowed to try
to make their relationship work. With their good memories
as sustaining as good food, they listened to late-night radio
talk shows, one featuring Doctor Ruth. When all else fails,
just hold each other, the small sex therapist crooned.
Barbie and Ken, on cue, groped in the dark,
their interchangeable skin glowing, the color of Band-Aids.
Then, they let themselves go--soon Barbie was begging Ken
to try on her spandex miniskirt. She showed him how to pivot as
though he were on a runway. Ken begged
to tie Barbie onto his yellow surfboard and spin her
on the kitchen table until she grew dizzy. "Anything,
anything," they both said to the other's requests,
their mirrored desires bubbling from the most unlikely places.
The poems re-printed courtesy of Orchises Press.
Denise Duhamel was the recipient of a 1989 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship and was a 1993 winner of Poets and Writers "Writers Exchange" award. She has taught poetry at Bucknell University, the American University and Lycoming College. She is the author of The Woman with Two Vaginas based on Eskimo mythology and Star-Spangled Banner Poems. She is married to the poet Nick Carbo.