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\u2018Dolls cannot stand alone\u2019 #adollslife<\/strong><\/p>\n You want the life of a Barbie doll\u2014 Those things will happen once, Otherwise, you\u2019ll spend most of your days Your travel will entail riding shotgun You\u2019ll be retired to a Tupperware If you\u2019re not as fortunate as the others, <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Dani Schlosser<\/strong> received her PhD in Creative and Critical Writing from University of Gloucestershire in 2016. Her poetry has been featured in anthologies such as Carnival<\/em> and Fire<\/em> in the UK and Journey Student Literary Magazine<\/em> in the US.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u2018Dolls cannot stand alone\u2019 #adollslife You want the life of a Barbie doll\u2014 the pink dream house, fancy dresses, driving Ferraris, riding My Little Ponies, being married to a man as perfect as you, whilst having occasional trysts with He-Man. Those things will happen once, perhaps twice. Otherwise, you\u2019ll spend most of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[137,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2018-poetry-picks","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16276"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16413,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16276\/revisions\/16413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nthe pink dream house,
\nfancy dresses, driving Ferraris,
\nriding My Little Ponies,
\nbeing married to a man as perfect as you,
\nwhilst having occasional trysts with He-Man.<\/p>\n
\nperhaps twice.<\/p>\n
\ngoing through multiple wardrobe changes,
\nlolly-coated fingers, plaiting and unplaiting,
\nplacing your body in compromises,
\nexposing anatomically blank nether regions.<\/p>\n
\nunder a minivan seat
\nnext to empty Walker\u2019s bags
\nand soaked-through McDonald\u2019s cups,
\nforgotten until the next spring sort-out.<\/p>\n
\ngrave amongst your kin
\nand their accessories,
\nsome missing arms, legs and heads\u2014
\nfor some of them, those are all that\u2019s left.<\/p>\n
\nyour beautiful life may end
\nat the hands of the neighbour boy
\nwho will hang you from a tree,
\ncover you and your lovely pink gown
\nin ketchup and lighter fluid
\nas a little girl\u2019s tears burn.<\/p>\n