My Life as a Doll

Elizabeth Kirschner

• Publisher: Autumn House Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781637680414
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Poesía

Kirschner's fourth collection of poetry is a narrative of an abused childhood. It explores the inner landscapes of memory through stunning imagery and voice.

1 • Cuckoo

Why do I love the winter garden so?

Is it because I hear the dirge

of dirt, elegy of vanquished blossoms?

Whatever emerges at season’s end

comes from a harrowing heaven: yesterday,

I believed I was a wooden woman

with a wooden heart the wolves

would tear apart. I jerked

about like a marionette with

tangled strings—slash of claws, teeth

sinking in to rip the flesh off

my wooden bones. When I was four

years old, my mother pummeled

the back of my head with a baseball bat.

I remember the pain. I remember

hitting the floor like a scarecrow

that was a heap of broken straw.

This is why I love the winter garden so:

energy of enigma. Icy blossoms.

After my mother hit the back

of my head with the bat’s

sweet spot, light cried

its way out of my body.

I could not yet tie my own

shoes. I could not yet pour

my own milk, but deeply

down and down I went

like a ball bouncing down

the cellar stairs. There

I played with my dolls.

They kept their conversations

to themselves, talking

behind my back.

I was one of them—

a doll carved out of a dog’s

bones, molded from stone,

or torn-up twisted rags.

As in all the dolls, my heart

was a single drop of blood

pulsing like a tiny red spider

trapped in its own lair:

the web of my making

is the web of my undoing.

My soul was scant—

a grain of salt burning

like an ember under the tongue.

My life as a doll

was a life of waiting—hours

reeled like pinwheels, days

passed like wind blown

through black holes, weeks

hung heavy as headstones.

Then God took a knife

cut me into pure pain,

alive amid birds

wilding in the grapevine

while my dreams angled

into me like hooks, dragging me

away from Mother

into a world

he forgot to bless.

A divinity of demons

called me by name:

Elizabeth, Elizabeth.

I sleepwalked on the sea at night

dreaming of sinking into molecules

of water that muscled me under

relentless tides.

Swish, swish

went my soul,

that tiny anchor,

size of a thumbnail.

Ship ahoy! I cried,

ship ahoy!

but my dreams

streamed out of me

in dribbles and scribbles of air:

to be me was to be

an ounce of darkness

sucked into the moon’s

dead gut.

Blip, blip went my heart

that wanted to be tossed

like a copper penny

in a wishing well:

I wanted a new mother

whose flesh would be

soft and warm, inviting

while my real mother

wore a mask cracked and caked

with the dust I so willingly

wanted to become:

salvation was a hardship

I was not yet ready to bear.

On the day I ran away

the light felt bullied.

I packed my pink suitcase

embossed with a kitten

and took off into the woods

surrounding the house.

The summer birds followed me.

I was camouflaged by the tender

undersides of leaves. I wanted

to live in a fairy house,

knew one awaited me

somewhere in the woods.

I held my hand out in order

to catch spindrift seed, knowing

if I caught just one it would burst

into a magic flower. This flower

would speak to me. This flower

would know there was a secret

blue butterfly trapped inside

the prison house of my bones.

When Mother found me,

...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• Cuckoo
• An Itty Bitty Ditty
• Tra-la-la
• O Healing Go Deep