Touring the Doll Hospital

By Amy Gerstler b. 1956 Amy Gerstler

Why so many senseless injuries? This one’s glass teeth

knocked out. Eyes missing, or stuck open or closed.

Limbs torn away. Sawdust dribbles onto the floor

like an hourglass running out. Fingerless hands, noses

chipped or bitten off. Many are bald or burnt. Some,

we learn, are victims of torture or amateur surgery.

Do dolls invite abuse, with their dent-able heads,

those tight little painted-on or stitched-in grins?

Hurt me, big botched being, they whine in a dialect

only puritans and the frequently punished can hear.

It’s what I was born for. I know my tiny white pantaloons

and sheer underskirts incite violation. Criers and crib-

wetters pursue us in dreams, till we wake sweat-

drenched but unrepentant, glad to have the order

by which we lord over them restored. Small soldiers

with no Geneva Conventions to protect them,

they endure gnawing, being drooled on, banishment

to attics. Stained by cough syrup, hot cocoa, and pee,

these “clean gallant souls” wear their wounds as martyrs’

garments. We owe them everything. How they suffer

for our sins, “splintered, bursted, crumbled . . .”

Every bed in the head replacement ward is occupied tonight.

Let’s sit by the legless Queen doll’s tiny wheelchair

and read to her awhile if she wishes it. In a faint

voice she requests a thimbleful of strong dark tea.

Amy Gerstler, “Touring the Doll Hospital” from Ghost Girl. Copyright © 2004 by Amy Gerstler. Reprinted with the permission of Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. For online information about other Penguin Group (USA) books and authors, see www.penguin.com.

Source: Ghost Girl (2004)

Biography

Known for its wit and complexity, Amy Gerstler's poetry deals with themes such as redemption, suffering, and survival. Author of over a dozen poetry collections, two works of fiction, and various articles, reviews, and collaborations with visual artists, Gerstler won the 1991 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry for Bitter Angel (1990). Her early work, including White Marriage/Recovery (1984), was highly praised. . . .

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