'Domesticity' by Claire Bateman

    

    

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)

'Sweet' by Claire Bateman

    

     

Goldilocks finds the cottage oddly familiar,

even to the rich, ripe scent of childhood—whose?

The big bed is like a giant custard;

it loves her too greedily.

The middle bed is prim as a porcelain pillbox;

it has everything to do with reform,

& nothing to do with comfort.

The little bed is just lonely enough to please her.

Tucked in by her imaginary nanny,

she's a compact sugar bomb.

The whole cottage fears her kamikaze heart,

standard in quiescent little girls;

the hearth tongs tiptoe out in the company of the teapot

as everything dismantles around her

until the clipped lawn, strewn with domestic items,

resembles a flea market in fugue state.

Meanwhile, deep in the woods,

the Bears are taking their walk.

Their clothes make them a little anxious:

starched ruffles & buttons—

also, walking upright.

Baby Bear murmurs a slight song:

We are harmless, harmless.

Is this what bears do? they wonder,

not actually knowing

any other bears.

(from her book Leap, New Issues, 2005)