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There’s a new movie about Barbie coming to a theater near you. I assure you that Denise Duhamel’s Kinky, her 1997 book of poems inspired by the famous doll is better than the movie. We celebrated Kinky’s twenty-fifth birthday. Here’s a sample poem:
BARBIE JOINS A TWELVE STEP PROGRAM
Barbie is bottoming out,
she’s sitting on the pity pot. She hasn’t the know how to extress
any of her emotions. Before she even gets
to her first meeting, she takes the first step, admits
her life has become unmanageable.
She’s been kidnapped by boys
and tortured with pins. She’s been left
for onths at a time between scratchy couch cushions
with cracker crumbs, pens, and loose change.
She can’t help herself from being a fashion doll.
She is the ultimate victim.
She humbly sits on a folding chair
in a damp church basement. The cigarette smoke
clouds the faces around her, the smell of bad coffee
permeates the air. The group booms the serenity prayer:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can, and wisdom
to know the difference. Poor Barbie is lost
in a philosophical quandary. Her God must be Mattel.
How can she turn her life and will over to a toy company?
Must she accept her primary form of locomotion
being the fists of young careless humans?
And what can she change? The only reason Barbie
is at the meeting at all is because she wound up in the tote bag
of a busy mother. She toppled out when the woman,
putting on lipstick at the bathroom mirror, spilled the contents
of her bag onto the gloor. The mother didn’t see Barbie skid under a stall door
where a confused drunk, at the meeting for warmth,
was peeing. Never thought Barbie had problems,
she siad, picking up the doll. She thought it would be funny
to prop Barbie in the last row. No one else noticed the doll
as she fidgeted in her seat. The hungry drunk
went on to sppon a cupful of sugar into her coffee.
Barbie sat through the meeting, wondering:
What is wisdom? What is letting go?
She wished she could clap like the others
when there was a good story about recovery. She accepted
she couldn’t, hoping that if she stopped struggling,
her higher power, Mattel, would finally let her move.
Miracles don’t happen overnight, said a speaker.
Take the action and leave the rest to God, said another.
Barbies prayer that she would be at the next meeting was answered.
A member of the clean-up committee squished her between the seat
and back of the folding chair and stacked her, with the others,
against the wall.
— from “Kinky” by Denise Duhamel (Orchises, 1997)
Go to Source
Author: The Best American Poetry
