When Barbie Was My Muse

Oh man. Here I commit to NaPoWriMo, and I haven't posted in two days. I've still got poems in my head, but, man, teaching and mommy-ing take it out of me. So...in other news, I met Denise Duhamel! Woohoo! I went to a reading at my alma mater and I was, gasp, early. Only because I had the time wrong. My husband taught the last 15 minutes of my middle school art class (8 girls, hee hee hee, that's revenge for any little wrong he's ever done me!), just so I could be on time.

Well, I was sitting on the outside edge of an aisle and I was one of only three people there and she said Hi! To me! I was cool, man. I said hi back. The reading, of course, was great. And, of course, I brought 1 book and bought two, so she signed my books. And we got to chat a little. She was very kind, very funny, very gracious. I hope to be so cool when I am a famous poet. And, best of all, she liked my hair!

It was a night out, a night listening to great poetry. In honor of all this, and in honor of Kinky, Duhamel's book of poems about Barbie, I am posting two Barbie old poems, written when I was a post-grad, non-wife, non-mother. No villanelle for me this week.


Still Life: Woman In Barbie Mask

When I wear this mask
I feel like a princess,
an American dream
girl, an apple pie, a white
picket fence, a brilliant
ivory, piano-key smile.

And then I take the mask off.
Me.
Mousy.

For my legs have grown crooked,
my hair is in tangles, and someone
has bitten off the toe of my left foot.


On Becoming the Woman I’ve Always Wanted To Be:
An Ode to Barbie

I tripped on one of your plastic shoes today.
I was wearing it.
It was a narrow fit,
too small, too red, too pointy,
too made for someone with a blond plastic head.

But I wore a pair of them out anyway
hoping some Joe, or better yet some Ken
would ask me out.
No luck.
Yet.

Later, I stopped at the salon,
still wearing your shoes.
I have your hair now.

The beautician said three Barbies
and one Skipper gave their lives for
my transformation.

Still no Ken.
Not even a Joe.

Because I needed a car to go with
the hair and the shoes, I stole a Corvette.
Another narrow fit, and those damn little
shoes tripped me up again.
My little plastic pump slipped off the brake.
I wrecked the Corvette on the interstate.

Good news, though.
Officer Ken said I looked like someone he used to know
and let me off with just a warning.
We’re going out tonight.
Now all I need is a little dress.

I Promise to Write Every Day

Because my blog has been a long time alone, because I feel guilty, not only for choosing dust bunnies over my children today, but for chossing dust bunnies over my writing, I have made a New Month Resolution. Well, it's almost a new month, almost windy, windy March, so what better time to let the winds of change sweep over my blog, over my writing life!

So, to get back into the swing of things, to crawl that much closer to my goal of sending out a manuscript this year (hey, who knew that was my goal for the year? Writing really works!), I am going to try to write daily on my blog. I have every intention of writing from the daily prompts in A Writer's Book of Days by Judy Reeves. We shall see. Please feel free to join me on my quest for writing nirvana.

Today's prompt is: Once, in the midst of all the recklessness...


Domestic Dispute

Once, in the midst of all the recklessness
I took the tiny clothes of all the Barbies
and lined them up along the window sill
for all the neighbors to see.

The man with the pugs wanted to know
when the garage sale started.
The man with the young daughter wondered
how much for the blond on the far left,
his daughter wants a doll.

My husband came home after leaving for milk.
He was really just running away. A woman with a gun,
even a glue gun, even a camera, or a handful
of miniature miniskirts can scare a man.
So here he comes with the milk and a Snickers bar,
but he is not snickering because he knows better
and I say, Which Barbie do I look like?

My husband has not come home in three days.
The milk soaked into the carpet has turned
to crust and odor. The Barbies are fading into
the white sill, the babies are hungry.
We are all losing our hair, blonde tufts
falling out in fistfuls, when we remember
to reach up, to pull.

The sun is pale in the sky,
the peonies have lost their pink.
In the midst of all the recklessness,
I wish I had not told my husband to go to Hell.