Book of Dolls 25, and: Book of Dolls 31

Abstract

Book of Dolls 25, and: Book of Dolls 31 Bruce Bond (bio) Book of Dolls 25 Our first portrait was a shadow. Ibelieve it. A shadow makes sense.One minus one, as sensibly imagined,it followed me here. It follows onehome before there is a memory,a home. Not mine, alone, this sense of mewhose custody I share with the lightfrom whose singularity mine is cut.When I think of all that never findsits voice, I think of you, shadow. Ihear the voice before there is a me,a memory, a voice. It follows me asecho follows echo. Forgery the forge.The sizzle of meat, the roar of dawn. Book of Dolls 31 We were saving the lives of dummies,and the teacher said, Pinch the nostrils,put your mouth over the victim's, like this,and the chests of our surrogatesrose from the floor in a wave of life.Then my dummy sighed, as waves do,dragging back a measure of the shore,and some kid giggled, because dummies, [End Page 173] as you know, are hilarious, especiallyin a crisis, and the still heart in therewas real enough to make a student nervous.We were saving lives, to each their turnamong the drowned, and so I knelt to kissa man, to press against the mirror and blow. [End Page 174] Bruce Bond Bruce Bond is the author of twenty-three books, most recently Plurality and the Poetics of Self (Palgrave) and Words Written Against the Walls of the City (LSUP). Presently he is a Regents Professor at the University of North Texas. Copyright © 2020 University of Nebraska Press