FIBERGLASS MADONNA

 

Barbie was in her twenties I'd say

when we used to sew her clothes

on your singer look alike

back room of your maternal trailer

stitching time, saving none

 

I'd insist on bringing her

to the shower with us and she would

bathe in the amazon river basin created

from the drainage of your hair

and I would braid her hair

like your motorcycle hair sitting

there at your ankle

under the fall of your cleansed body

 

And her perfect plastic features

were a replica of you

reflecting in the basin

where a narcissus flower once bloomed

and Adonis once bled into

the brushed nickel drain

 

Even your breasts were as plastic as hers

those same warrior breasts

but you fell down the drain of wisdom,

of vitality,

a break in the river current

 

And Barbie was fully clothed

when you tried to stitch yourself

together in an institute for the imperfect,

communicating with your Singer look-alike,

Sexton at her typewriter

 

You were in your twenties, I’d say,

when you drowned,

Anticlea at the river

 

And we are bathing eternally,

showering Madonna statue of

mother daughter Barbie

with your blood forever pouring over us

Barbie, that whore, lying naked in the drain