MICHELLE CONSTANTINE COLE | Sugar Rim
ALISSA HATTMAN | B.
CHRISTINE KALAFUS | Barbie Townhouse
JESS MANN | Come On Barbie
CHRISTINE PERSCHE | Barbie’s Feast
HALEY PROTO |Ordinary
RADHA | Dream (House)
KAREN REID | The Crown
RAE ROSE| Barbie Takes Her 3rd Poetry Workshop
HALEY WRIGHT | Barbie’s Freedom
SPECIAL THANKS TO AUDREY MUCCI FOR FRONT AND BACK COVER ART T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S
She rises from bed, considers: what have I done? Her body is wrecked, held together at the joints by plastic. Arms pop into the torso, legs pop into the hips. Her black nightgown is loose, but not loose enough. She cannot get comfortable. She tries to recall: was it a nightmare? She feels the sharp shock of her cheek, the tender bruised skin. She’s broken out around the mouth; her red pimpled face throbs. Still in makeup from the night before. A waxy mess of a wig. She lets the gown slip from her shoulder. Doesn’t see the horror we see. A window cut out of her plastic torso. A rough cut. A hacking, really. No lungs, no heart. In the chest cavity a human eyeball. She cannot feel her feet. Everyone is staring. Her face is a hot stain.
Ken, I’ve been keeping it tight since 1959. I learned Italian to whisper ti amo at midnight, became a surgeon and dentist and veterinarian to pay for your poker habit, your friends’ beer. I ran for president in 2000 to pardon you for that Cayman Island thing. You had a crush on Pamela Anderson, so I became a lifeguard. I became an architect to build your last five houses that you kept setting on fire – so I became a firefighter. trying to put you out. You got mad at your video game’s glitch, and I learned how to code. When things got really bad, when you were only spending, I worked part time at Sea World, McDonald's and See's Candies. I styled pets, baby sat and was a resort greeter in the Caribbean.
I tried to impress you – wrecking my feet as a ballerina, wrecking my hair in NASCAR, wrecking my brain in football. You wanted a hero? A villain? I’ve been Marvel, I’ve been DC. I’ve burgled cats.
Remember when things were simple? You could only turn your head left or right. It was so cute when it rained and your hair fell out. I haven’t forgotten your 1993 “Earring Magic Ken” phase, but it’s true that Hispanic Teresa and I had ourselves a time. I miss my home, Wisconsin, Land of Cheese, when my last name was Roberts. When my last name mattered.
You never wanted to meet Total Wreck Barbie, Complete Sham Barbie, Breakdown Barbie. Crazy Diet Weighing Pieces of Chicken Barbie. Oxycodone Barbie, Benzodiazepine Barbie. No Scar Barbie, no Sling Barbie, no PTSD Barbie from my time in the Marines, the Navy, as a god damn paratrooper. Ken, you mattered until now. Until Poet Barbie. Poet Barbie sets me free.
I remain unmoved, stuck in this plastic shell.
I beg to be free.
I want to run, I want to cry, I want to frown. Relinquish your control.
I long for the world to know there is someone living in this shell.
I beg to be free.
I no longer wish to be your Barbie Girl.
A lemon-yellow elevator with a h lifts her to ascending floors. Who cares that it’s polyethylene. Barbie’s feet aren’t made for stai
Who cares if the rooms are cheap the mirrors don’t reflect, and the are painted on. So what if the view not actual windows, and Oh yeah. Ken.
Drink him in, girls.
Six-pack abs rippling under a white Lacoste polo before a perpetually sparkling in-ground pool waiting for Barbie to serve him a mojito. Barbie doesn’t do dusty antiques. Everything is gingham and sunshine.
Including her nails. Sorry Kenny, still wet.
Her S-shaped easy chair is a dollar sign and that inflatable striped sofa is built to float a girl to womanhood even if her thighs stick to the plastic.
My favorite was a generous hooded cape in deep forest green velour; Aunt Melanie sewed the most exquisite Barbie clothes. Dresses were mod, cut on the bias with sheen and pattern, suits had button details and silk linings, coats were varying lengths of real fur and houndstooth. She sewed the way she did everything else — with extreme talent and commitment. A Catholic nun, she spent most of her time as a missionary in Bolivia.
When she came for a family visit, we all got new clothes. Mom and Dad luxuriated in buoyant robes as my sister Melanie and I danced in matching rompers and couldn’t wait to swim in our new bathing suits. Barbie got a whole new closet from scraps, remnants transformed into her most sophisticated wardrobe.
Aunt Melanie was an artist at heart. Like Babette making her feast, Barbie’s extravagant fashion balanced a life lived focused on those in need; a great artist is never poor according to writer Isak Dineson, and a true saint never styles without soul.
Birdie, the little girl who plays with me owns me, really doesn’t know I sneak out of the dream house now and then. I can’t take my Corvette. It’s too loud. My stilettos sashay me to Quartarero’s Bar. Birdie’s dad drinks Old Fashioneds exclusively.
The bar is smooth mahogany. I pull myself up, one hinge at a time. The view is amazing. I build a step stool out of sugar cubes, climbing to the top of a glass. I fall in, headfirst.
Heaven is honey brown with a cherry left behind.
It feels like I won it.
My décolletage is coated with sugar from the rim. I wade my toes in the Old Fashioned until I’m warm and tingly. I look for Birdie’s dad. He’s way better looking than Ken. Out of the glass, I remove my shoes on a cocktail napkin and shimmy down the bar. Birdie’s dad sits with his laptop open to Wordle.
When Birdie is at preschool and the Mrs. at work, I hear him with women. They make love two feet from me in the dream house. I jump on X then P then Enter. I hiccup, convinced I will be welcomed to a three way.
Still damp from my Old Fashioned christening, my eyes — for now — will settle to watch.
The box was pink. Of course.
The doll inside swathed in plastic mesh gems the color of the Christmas lights reflected in a little girl’s eyes.
Unhooking her from the cardboard backing meant untying knotted elastic impatiently prying at knots with bitten nails
I got the scissors.
She came like a Cinderella From a ball
But with masks and clothes
That loudly proclaimed Different Barbie Different girl.
I couldn’t even name her.
First name Costume.
Last name Ball.
Adapting quickly, I learned You could adjust the length of her gown
And the overlay of the iridescent petticoats
To match the different masks.
You kept peeling back the taffeta
And there was something else she could be.
I loved her like a peony
Blooming the second week of June
A promise of summer
That will be so beautiful, and swell with sunlight and rain
Until its gorgeous head is too heavy for the Slender stalk
And it lays itself down on the ground
At your feet.
Later In my twenties
I would work harder than I had ever worked in my life
To fit into a box
Shaped like a woman
Worth loving.
In a dress so short
The plastic gleam of her ass
Shone almost as brightly As the silver of her dress
Shimmying in the flash of a magazine page
The gloss of a hunger
I had begun to nurture
Like a bud In my soul.
The emptiness inside me
Meant I could be anything. In the dim fairy lights
Of my dorm room
I applied tiny plastic gems
Beside my eyes.
Being smaller I learned. Is an invitation.
People touch you often Without invitation.
They tell you what you could have been What you lost What you were.
They pick you up And put you where they want you.
And your voice Is so underfed
It can only protest with a growl Like a stomach
And the laughter you hide inside the sound
Suddenly belongs to everyone else And in the glare of a fluorescent bathroom, The gems on your skin
Cannot hide the purple stains under your eyes. The skin so thing there You can see the veins
Like a flower petal
Held up to the sun.
You feel the heat And wonder how long
You feel the heat
Before the weight of being beautiful Makes the soil look Ready
And wonder how long
Before the weight of being beautiful Makes the soil look Ready
Restful A darkness you forgot Waits always Inside boxes.
Restful A darkness you forgot Waits always Inside boxes.
BARBIE was copied directly from Bild-Lilli, a cartoon character in the German tabloid Bild Bild created Lilli as a floozy gold digger, and exhibitionist and was marketed to men as a gag gift
American businesswoman Ruth Handler bought three dolls while travelling in Germany
Back in the states, she named the slightly lighter-skinned doll after her daughter Barbara and marketed it to young girls through her company Mattel in 1959
Handler’s son Kenneth was the namesake of Barbie’s boyfriend Ken Mattel sells three Barbie dolls per second*
