[Associate Editor, Britt Bustos: This poem juxtaposes the cultural moment of the Barbie movie and its reflection on the meaning of the franchise with the past of the speaker to pay tribute to Sinéad O'Connor as well as the girlhood that defines them both. Glass dances between present revelations and past moving-on with a delicate stroke, bouncing between unearthed delights and neighbors watering gardens to find joy through the bearing of grief.]

 

 

for Sinéad O’Connor (Shuhada’ Sadaqat) 

 

 

It seems only fitting that on the movie screen,

Barbie too, has been thinking of death, 

called to an unseen portal and what it means

to be human. How astonishing that I am 

one of the oldest women in this theater. 

That in spite of my devotion to self-destruction,

in spite of the world with its absurd cruelties

and terrible longings, here I sit 

with other women in pink feather boas

and rhinestone sunglasses, 

like some sort of beautiful, ridiculous hallucination. 

 

Sinead, lately I have been trying for joy

because I can’t think of any new ways to grieve. 

Tonight I will practice touching the surfaces

of heavy things and letting them go. 

I’ll send my daughter video reels of dogs

dressed up like mailmen or Elvis,

distractions from worn sorrows,

attempts to unearth delight, though 

my sadness slows me down like a bad limb,

like a clock’s tedious hand, stuck 

between one hour and another. 

 

When my daughter was five, she buried

Barbies in our backyard and told me

they’d died. One summer morning, before 

she woke, I knelt over the soil, pulled

one of them out by her hair and held her 

in front of me, squinted hard into her unseeing eyes.

And in the too-bright morning light, 

I willed her back to life. 

 

Minutes passed before I noticed 

that my neighbor watering her garden

had seen me and turned away– 

Sinead, I know we can only bear so much.