palace of winds

All of Anna’s dolls committed suicide sooner or later. It happened so often that there arose a complex set of rules to govern it, a series of contests, a bi-monthly festival. The attrition rate was enormous because Anna’s mother had little patience for mending, but some of the hardier or more cautious dolls claimed to remember the summer Polly Purple swept the competition for three months running. Some people claimed she’d made a deal with the dog. He did rough her up often enough, but usually she impaled herself on crooked nails or got trapped in doors or, in one brilliant afternoon, slipped free at just the right moment to lose half her hair and a whole inch off her side seam in an escalator accident that shut down mall transportation for over two hours. The porcelain dolls whispered darker stories about assisted suicides, and though no one ever said Laura’s name, everyone remembered the glass-faced princess who fell from her high perch under mysterious circumstances.

My day dreams are full of office supplies. A binder clip is first an exotic bird, then an old elementary school lesson about shapes. Triangle, I think. Acute, obtuse, vector. A cat’s funny metal whiskers.

The room is full of life, a riot of odd animals. The great brown tongue of the tape roller. The breathing of the copy machine and later its annoyed baby bird fussing. The stapler lurking on the counter like a calm crocodile. The red ribcage of a letter sorter stuck on a high shelf. The inviting, androgynous laps of chairs. Flashes of ink slipping through a river of paper, breaking the skin of the water.

This orderly jungle is more sinister than you would think. The low, safe murmur lulls. You grow dull and you forget to keep your eye on that thicket of pencils, the copse of paper clips. You spin idly in your chair, unaware of the danger around you. You lose your purpose; the copier flashes on, its feathers ruffling; you draw up your legs and loop lazily away from the shore of the table.

Adrift, you may begin to daydream. You may begin to think the little wedge of metal in your hand is opening its wings.

I wrote this for my Introduction to Women’s Studies class, and promised I’d post it. So I am.

“The Way They Like It”

She is a girl:
against an alleyway fence;
crammed in a photo booth;
on her back.

Last night, she thinks –
pleased, chosen –
he was sober.
Her reflection addresses her
from the cafe window,
a pucker-mouthed stranger.
She pulls back the collar
of her shirt to show him the bruise –
primitive, ringed with teeth.
In darkness she is
just a warm body, held
down, the way they like it.

Two tables over the man
watches the girl in the glass,
knowing.
Every night she is a smooth, blank surface,
every night a new history.
He stands and her boundaries shift,
her compass of hope swinging wildly.