Doll’s House

A new poem by Kathryn Simmonds.

The artwork, "Dollhouse," by artist Miriam Schapiro, appears in the exhibition, "Women House," featuring global artists and their reinterpretations about women in the home, during a preview showing at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC, March 8, 2018. Is home a burden, tied to endless chores and confinement, or a liberating shelter? Turns out it can be both for women artists exploring and deconstructing notions of domestic space and gender in a show opening on March 9, 2018, at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington. Running across several generations and featuring 36 international artists working in various media, the result is full of humor, both the dark and the laugh-out-loud kind. / AFP PHOTO / SAUL LOEB (Photo credit should read SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)

The doll’s house wants for windows
and a proper paint job.
Half the floors are carpeted
and half bare board.
It’s liveable despite the lack of toilets.
The roof lifts up. The walls swing out.
There’s Daddy fully clothed and showering,
slumped against the cubicle, his son
face down on the floor outside.
There’s big sister at her computer,
orange wool hair flying straight up to the sky.
Her little sister’s at the kitchen table,
feet shod in wooden shoes,
never finishing a meal.
The empty fridge is on its side in the attic.
The pink sheet grass is wrinkled all around.
And Mummy lies on her hard bed
in the middle of the afternoon
dreaming with her eyes open.