By: Adriana Morgan
Dollhouses
We live in a dollhouse,
so perfectly designed to fit
our hopes and dreams.
The moon blinks her glazed orange eye,
crying golden tears over our street.
I can see a blue goat playing the violin
in an azalea bonsai above our window.
We all live in dollhouses.
So perfectly designed to lock our secrets inside.
Why did no one tell me this before?
I can see the cherry red and lime yellow lights
glitter in the night. Bright comets
are falling and dying; star trees
are growing fast from their graves.
I open the door to our pink dollhouse.
It smells like cinnamon and baked apples.
You welcome me with your smile
and a bouquet of violets. My favorites.
I spread them between the orchid pots.
Our living room blooms
like a tropical jungle.
You look blue, so blue—
a western bluebird.
I can watch you for hours. I won't get bored.
It's fun touching your fine blue fingers.
I can play the piano on them.
And on the white sheer curtains,
I can play the harp.
We live in a dollhouse.
You can crush and eat my gingerbread heart,
crumb after crumb. I don't care.
A new, sweeter heart will grow by tomorrow morning.
I can cry all my tears, fluffy meringue drops,
and not feel the pain.
As long as we live in a dollhouse.
Trees Are Poets
The trees are poets—
inspired, distinguished,
anonymous poets.
Those poplars, for instance,
bordering the street in straight lines
like solemn soldiers,
blow ballads into the blue.
That lilac adjusting his violet crown,
awakened by the honey bees' buzz,
whispered this symbolist poem
at dawn, melting me down:
Purple eyes bloom and wither
on my dark shoulders.
I'm full of seasons.
See that majestic cypress
guarding the cemetery gates?
She engraves green elegies
on people's graves.
So glum, she went into mourning.
Her cones are tears-wet
in the morning.
That old oak tree,
swinging solitary wings,
sculpts haikus in acorns.
I saved this from a squirrel:
Fairies from sky rings
kiss my green belly, tickling
brown bellybuttons.
And that weeping willow?
She's a free-verse writing widow.
Since they killed her husband,
she drops love poem offerings
into the river's crystal window.
One for every bird
nested in her arms.
That eucalyptus likes lyrics.
He sang his musing,
I caught its echo in his hollow:
The moon fires the knots of my fingers.
Strange, spongy creatures pass by.
They look unrooted,
their nests are dry.
Now, every time you walk by,
caressing the trees' leafy manes,
expect a poem to fall at your feet:
round, ripe fruit,
full of seeds.
The trees are poets.
And every falling leaf is a line.
Adriana Morgan completed a Ph.D. in French Literature at the University of Letters in Nantes, France. She is fluent in six languages and worked as a translator and terminologist at the European Commission in Luxembourg and the United Nations in New York. She taught French at the University of Jamia Milia Islamia, New Delhi, India, the French Alliance and the Universities of Valparaiso and Vina del Mar, Chile.She currently works as a multi-dimensional artist: painter, poet, and children's picture books writer and illustrator.She is the first prize winner of the Midnight Mozaic Fiction (Medium, 2019), one of the selected winners of the Canadian poetry contest—Quebec and the Francophony, and second prize winner of the Daniil Pashkoff International Poetry Contest, 2018, Germany.