Danny

CB FOLLETT

I wasn’t much for dolls, too predictable,
but there was Danny,
with his hard rubber head and soft rubbery arms
and legs that I could pinch into little peaks
and know it hurt him. 

His body was stuffed cloth, and naked
he was unplucked-looking.
So he was always dressed, the same striped shirt
and blue overalls because I wasn’t much interested
in bending his arms backward in and out of sleeves
and his toes, little rubber corn kernels, 
always snagged on the pant legs, so there was 
Danny, complete as he came. 

I wanted no one to see that he reduced to 
cloth in the middle and in the back
was the hard cylinder of his mama mama
that sounded when you bent him over,
mama mama a whiny noise
much better when it got clogged somehow
and became deep and slow  Maahw,  Maahw.

Danny improved with age. His hard reddish curls
turned brown with grime and one day
his eyelids that closed so peacefully, thick stiff
lashes lying against his skin, snapped open
for the last time and his honest blue eyes
rolled up into his head and stayed there, only
a small crescent of blue showing at the top, 
the rest white and zombie-like. 

With his infirmity Danny came into his own.
Mother and Grandmother were aghast. They tried
to hide him, likely the precursor to a trip to the garbage
but I searched relentlessly. 

They’d beg me to leave him home, which made
him more endearing to me. He was always
with me, tilted downward under my arm
his eyes blank and addled. He would 

sit beside me on the couch when old Mrs. Finch
came to call, would ride in the car to Aunt Catherine’s
who gave me another doll in hope. 

In time, Danny’s arms gave up their youthful
springiness and took on the dryness of age,
serious disease overtook his complexion, and his skin
began to separate and fissure. The acne was
overlooked, the skin bandaged until
his limbs looked like lattice, but one fateful day
his left eye gave a metallic gurgle 
and fell out, and I losing patience 
with ailment, at last, gave him up.

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