The dollhouse was so exquisite that the servants, finding it uncanny, refused to approach it, so the little girl understood that she must dust it herself. And dust it she did, with the regular feather duster for the roof & exterior walls, & the dollhouse-sized feather duster for the billiard table, the sideboards, the tea wagon, the bassinet, the four-posters, the chiffonier, the escritoire, the overflowing coal scuttle, the eggcups, the shaving brush, the boar’s head forever on the verge of utterance, the little man with his spreading sideburns, his widow’s peak, & his historical sense of injury, & the little woman with her diamond teardrop earrings & secret Swedenborgian leanings. Also the baby, whose wax was still soft & warm, & the little dollhouse girl, who had lost her pearl ring in her golden hair where it ceaselessly traveled, in love with its private itineraries.
(from her book Leap, New Issues, 2005)
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