Doll Factory

William Doreski

 

At ninety-two my mother's gone
to work in a city of burned
warehouses, collapsed refineries,
cellar holes, abandoned housing
projects, boarded peeling storefronts.
We attempt to rescue her
from a job so demeaning no one

can accept its paychecks and thrive.
She has to place a parasol
in the fist of a small vinyl doll,
five thousand units per shift.
Her supervisor, young and pimply,
slumps along and watches the line,
his gaze an adolescent blank.

My wife and I scour the city
but can't find the doll factory
my mother described on the phone.
We halt for lunch at a diner
run by a husky pair of women
in bib overalls.   The menu sports
greaseburgers, fat fries, mucus pie.

We order and from our booth note trucks
grinding down the industrial streets,
their exhaust as pink and fluffy
as pinafores.   The day's dying.
Perhaps we'll see my mother walking
with her lunchbox, returning
to a boarding house where men                       

pounce on beef and mashed potatoes,
gulp half-quart tumblers of milk,
and slap the landlady's massive rump
till she orders them to desist
or she'll withhold the blueberry pie.
Or maybe my mother lives alone
in a studio with one window                           

overlooking a park, a stone church.
Maybe she's homeless, sleeps in a car.
The city's so big and ruined
no one, not even the cops,
can locate the factory she described,
but we'll prowl every neighborhood
till we find and rescue her before                    

this industrial doll obsession
utterly claims and redeems her
of the crime of being human
for which old age both punishes
and rewards by rendering flesh
transparent, exposing the organs
we had least expected to see.