here I am knocking on the door of the polly pocket house
like thwack thwack thwack, my hand ping ponging off the knocker
because it is all made of rubber! no one can hear me banging.
someone arrives and I enter. it is my best friend
and she is also a polly pocket, just like me. we have gooey shoes that make us tall!
except we are still tiny. a giant hand floats out the window, on the lawn.
the rug lawn. shag grass. I think, I have to pee, but I don’t, because I’m a doll
and I have no parts to pee or poop. my best friend and I are having a blast!
we are putting different outfits on and trading purses. our arms are charging
up and down, because those are the only directions they can go. we keep trying to hug
but our arms don’t work that way. so we don’t hug! we walk on the plastic. a hand
comes and picks us up, and now we are over here. on the rug. on the grass. we know
where we are and we know how we got here but that does not make it any less strange.
suddenly we are far apart and I can’t see my best friend over the tufts of lawn.
there is a large rock. there is a big bone. a part of an animal carcass!
the large hand picks up the bit of bone and takes it somewhere else. I hear a loud rumbling sound
like five rocks grinding together. my best friend comes flying over.
she says wheeee! she says the hand is eating the animals! she says
it’s snack time. we wish we could eat together but we can’t
because we don’t have stomachs or mouths that open. I think how are we talking to each other?
and suddenly we can’t talk anymore. because I had that thought. I am so stupid!
I miss talking to my best friend. but we can’t do it anymore.
so we lie on the shag and stare up at the sky. it is white.
we would hold hands if we could but we can’t because they are still plastic. we watch
a big hand waft over us. we watch it wave and we don’t wave back cause we can’t.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Juliet Gelfman-Randazzo is an MFA candidate at Rutgers University-Camden, where she has recently written about tattooing, mediums, and trees. Her poetry and essays appear or are forthcoming in HAD, Bedfellows Magazine, dirt child, Hot Pink Mag, seasons of des pair quarterly, and Peace on Earth Review, among others. Her audio pieces have aired on NPR, KQED, the City Arts & Lectures podcast, and The Kitchen Sisters Present podcast. She also makes clothes and objects like clothes, but not quite.