Poppets (poem)

Poppets

This beanbag poppet with a muslin skin

Made to dance on its stubs

Given vocals pitched high

Pinched out of a pocket to tell of

How it lounges most hours in a hammock

Wasting time

There’s a second poppet

Made of calico and yellow floss

Jesus did not teach with these simpers and moues

Did not instruct

With that bulging eye and angry smile

And a sneering little undercut

But still

Ranks of worshiping rumps fill pews

Here in the project basket we find

two patches

Never sewn into the figure of a man

murmuring all they might have been

One half done in rickrack edging

Red like a steady heartbeat

One with a single eye

A Small Exchange (poem)

(2018 Stephanie Foster)