From the Life of the Doll
From the Life of the Doll by Tom Whalen
The doll bears witness to all we are not—we are alive, she isn't; we will die, she won't. No wonder then that the one we found on the bench the morning after a night of hard rain—the one with the glazed eyes, the pale lips, the porcelain thighs, wearing a dirty bonnet and torn night dress, as if someone had purposely soiled her—we dismembered, beheaded, and burned.
This prose poem comes from Tom Whalen's book Dolls, which can be purchased for $8 from Cake Train at www.caketrain.org. (9/2009 update: the book is now out-of-print, but you can try Amazon for a used copy, or buy a $2.99 Kindle edition.)
The top image is by Hans Bellmer. It comes from a 1991 exhibit catalog of his photography.
