Sign Language Barbie

Sign language Barbie.

     for Denise Duhamel  (my attempt at "Kinky" -inspired poetry,

                                           albeit feeble by comparison)

Barbie floats center stage in her pink dress, her paper-faced

husband forcing a smile.  He is struggling to remember

the gist of the speech she 'll deliver.  Barbie twists her mouth

in a momentary grimace,   not wanting to come off too self-assured,  

the lights that will halo her,   the clumsy demeanor of her

husband, so purple and smothered in his raincloud of fibs.  But

then she's reminded of duty, how she signs to those who can't

hear,  of the image to  recover and the  peanut -crunching crowd. 

The irresistible charm of the  charitable,  like  those English ladies in a film

 she once saw,  so polished in gentle arts of distraction,  so  promptly disguising 

 their scorn for the handmaids. The generals all rode horses back then,

 raised their spectacles to read maps,  wrote home to women in long dresses and

white gloves.  She has never read a British novel, not even a book of etiquette

but swears she has mastered it all by intuition, and the frequent trips to her top-notch

stylist.  In this brave new world, Mattel now offers plastic sheep and pastures,

 a Cyclops to conquer and even Rambo Ken who can morph into a real man, ready to pull

his gun at the first traffic fight.  Yet this Barbie has issues:  how to manage the multiple

movements of  wrists and fingers, make hands that sweep softly up and down in

gestures not too robotic. Mattel calls its engineer army into action, hoping this Barbie

can bring  some good sales to a falling market, one where girls are always wanting more

out of life.   After all, is she not an embodied saviour, poised to return to the unborn their value,

some quiet to the streets,  and a choir of angels to  home and  hearth?