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Likestarlings is a place for talking in poems. We pair poets with poets and they write a sequence of six new works by responding in turn to one another. Our palaver blog goes beyond poetry to discuss collaboration in theory and in practice. Please take a look, and feel free to add comments, opinions and suggestions here. Read poems here
 

Puppet


You hung it behind the door,
no movement
only openings and the closings.

You never liked it,
found it a dead wood thing
and never named it, unusual for you
when everything was named
with the careful rites of a priestess.

Fierce Barbies, languid stuffed animals
a bed corner gang of jumble Action Men
each one could be called and summoned,
all moved smooth as fish through the world,
pretend was as powerful as sinew.

You said that it could not work on pretend,
someone had to pull the strings
and life was already full of make me, have to.
You cut the strings once but it never ran
no matter how you willed going into limbs,
breathed leaf and wind back into its memory.

Years later on a visit home
you tied the strings together again,
so it could be hung back behind the door.
It took hours; head bent over clenched knots,
your tongue poking out in concentration
as if this was a final act of some connection.