Literary NFT Collection 1.1:
“Puppet House”

What if I say you're fine, spelled with a K?
What if you said nice? K N I C E.
What if we had glitter eyes and wood hands?
And what if the curtain dropped again?
And we were unstoried, unseen, unheard,
and unbelieving of the other sides--
l8ve, d8th, all the way to the balcony.
No puppet maestro two-handing the stage,
no footlights to set our flounces aflame,
no crying crescendoes or brassy bands,
no love-me, love-me-nots. (Spelled with a K.)
What then? Is the audience enraptured?
Or felted and velveteen, quicksand and lime.

For three days, just three, I could see the strings:
the ones that come out of our hands and feet;
and the little eyehook ones on our necks;
and the top of the head ones, and chin ones--
and the ones people have to work their waists.
I could see how the strings went taut, pulled first,
and how all of us were about to spin.
We had newly glued clothes, joints fixed with tacks,
mitten fingers, and fresh heads in paste
with papier-mâché eyes, painted to weep.
The poor souls with no jaw-hinges nodded, lips pursed,
while the rest of us yawped: of crops and kings;
and our queen mother, who let us eat cake.

Our puppet heads are wooden, but heavy,
no good for kissing, but better for trying.
If you would remember my puppet name,
I could be an as-if someone again,
clattering promises you would ask for. If,
if we kissed, would we kiss with open mouths?
I don't think I have a hinge in my jaw;
I think my mouth is carved in a pucker,
maybe shaping a word that can't be said,
or tasting the wish by licking the flame.
If your face is carved like mine, with no hinge,
our wooden heads will peck please, please, please.
But if, if we have hinges and chins? Who
would we be to toss our heads and haha?

I should have said the first strings were my own.
I was thinking of you, maybe. Maybe
I was thinking of you thinking of me,
when I saw a loose knot in my palm, slack
before it went taut. All my strings
went taut. That's how I found the six others.
Each string is blue and white, baker's twine,
but really old: frayed, dirty and yellow.
I thought it was a curse on once lovers,
that it was that "no, there is no nothing,"
but then I saw the strings of the redcap
who drove the baggage through the empty station,
in a cart that had its own set of lines,
and outside, there were strings on the sparrows.

I remember when the puppet master
sat at the same window in the same gray light,
with the same rolled glass panes of six and six,
and the same wood frame to nod yes or no,
and not-now laughed and turned back to the bench.
I remember the knots of your nine strings,
like weedflowers in childhood meadows,
and how each knot uncoiled, unwilling,
and you fell to a heap, pirouette spent.
And when my own strings went slack, to the bone,
I remember that we were limb to limb,
and that the master went out for the night,
and that our strings were tied to each other.

So maybe after this Armageddon,
there really will be a resurrection,
and our souls will rise up from our bodies,
and we'll be set free from flesh and from d8th,
and be incarnated, much more durably,
and for longevity, in the patient,
waiting puppets, of which there are many,
that we've left behind--tucked in bassinets,
sitting on wicker chairs in vestibules,
festooning branched hat racks on screened porches--
with their felt, glass, porcelain and bead eyes,
with their painted pupils, and pouting lips,
and their quiet prophesy of heaven.

I don't think I'm ready to talk to you. I guess I could be afraid of something--of "you," of "me," of "too late," and "too soon," of words that write themselves behind my eyes, on black slate, in chalk or maybe gypsum. If it's fear, that's a weak word for the it that threads with a bodkin into my abdomen and loops back out. You know, that stitch that slings us into days of disappointing gifts, and wet landings in unknown diseases. If I'm afraid, I'm afraid of the future, of you on the other end of these strings, so listless with your yoke thé buffoons, and so so looking for something else to do.

Twenty years, knock knock, and I'm without strings,
while you, too, rattle your knobs down hallways.
If hawseholes still linger, I don't look for them.
I don't wonder, darling, about the hand,
which waits, without a palm, without an other--
no valence of clouds or eyes in the blue--
mantled above what we can remember,
above the de8d side and our varnished pupils.
But what if, what-if we, our cords untangled,
quivered by our fetters, ensnared again?
And the footlights kindle our wooden faces,
and we toss embraces to jointed limbs,
suspended, while we clatter painted lips.