‘Somedays Barbie’ by Rikki Santer

You favored tender leaves and petals in your summer borsht
and tried to sip strawberry milk through a paper straw
of swirling pink stripes that tickled your perfectly sealed lips.
And sometimes when my index finger and thumb
rubbed into your waist, I dissolved into a field
of stunted wishes. I loved you stupid when you sat
on the wrong side of synagogue taunting all the yarmulke
men and puberty boys who admired you awkward.
And you always forgave me for the dark quiet of your shoe
box bed with thrift-store hankies and cotton ball pillows
because my father wouldn’t justify a dream
house. Some days I wanted to break your shicksa face open
and bury you out back in the soft earth of my mother’s
rock garden where the sun didn’t always know
the right amount of warm. Yet there were days
when your story was a song of deep, low sounds
from where you lingered on the far side of mother
star. Under my pillow, o magic sister of fashion prowess,
o forecast whisperer, you made sure I received your dreams
filled with liminal ideas of kiss and matched accessory.
And sometimes we would stretch out on our backs under oaks,
humming to the soft beat of acorns falling near our heads
and the ants dancing between our fingers and we were blissful
as fellow princesses floating down from the clouds. Some
days my brother and I would stuff you into his toy army jeep
and speed you into kitchen walls for the delight of your wig
wardrobes catapulting like drunken bats.

Author Bio:

Rikki Santer’s poetry has been published widely and has received many honors including several Pushcart and Ohioana book award nominations, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and in 2023 she was named Ohio Poet of the Year. Her twelfth poetry collection, Resurrection Letter: Leonora, Her Tarot, and Me, is a sequence in tribute to the surrealist artist Leonora Carrington.  Please contact her through her website, https://rikkisanter.com.