The Vampyre Doll Collector

Here is a poem published in my chapbook by 918 Studio, Sappo, I Should have Listened:



The Vampyre Doll Collector by Ellen Tsagaris [or, If Jenny Wren Could Have Lived Forever]:


She holds her first patient in her hand,
A limestone mother figure,
Her hair cornrowed, her face blank.


She daintily repairs a tiny break in
One long, sculpted row of braids,
Ancient dust lying on her old
Oak table in primeval miniature
Piles.

The full moon helps light her worktable.
The pale light of Hecate shines on the faces
Of her silent charges, lining the wall,
Silent witnesses to every historical epoch.

Here the stoic Ushabti mingles with the ancient Roman
Rag doll,

The delicate ivory fingers of a Bunraku
Puppet touch the satin robe of a Bartholomew Baby.

Tiny wooden daughters of Queen Anne rub
Microscopic shoulders with wax dolls dressed
In stiff gold lace,

Inhabitants of Baby Houses, once hers in long ago
Immortal childhood, themselves now 400 years gone.

Her milliners’ models, her cornhusks and buckskin babies,
Gifts of the great chiefs of the great tribes,
The Sun Dolls, the Kachinas, the elegant

Lady brought to Roanoke by an Englishman and
Gifted her by a daughter of Powhatan,

The Nutcrackers and Mechanicals,
The Frozen Charlottes, the Noh masks
And African Fertility figures,

The Mlles. Huret, Thullier, Bru, Jumeau,
Mascotte, Eden, and Steiner,

Fräuleins Kestner, Simon, Halbig, Marseilles, Heubach, and the like,

All populate her shelves and nooks and crannies, where she works.


Heads and parts and bodies in this toy morgue reside in jars and boxes,
Glass eyes peer from glass and crystal tubes once part
Of Dr. Frankenstein’s lab,

Wracks of tiny dresses embroidered by Mary, Queen of Scots, and
Catherine, late of Aragon, and Nan Bullen, and Lady Jane,
All once her friends and confidantes,

These line her cupboard shelves, and tin headed babies and
Metal young maidens take up space in her pantry where tinned beef
And canned soups were stored in more mundane households.

And all were her toys first; she had seen them new and shiny,
And their boxes and coffins, and trunks, where they had
Survived,
Lay hidden in her cellar and attic, carefully labeled and preserved.

For millennia after millennia she had cared for them, her
Others,
Her Children, these “gentle vampires” crafted as icons
Of humanity,

Presents to her, the child that was made by a spirit,
That could not die,
That lived by night,

There were even a few dolls of the undead,
“Corpses” of living corpses,

Each holding a bit of herself, of her story,
Of her mother that she still remembered,

She who gave her that first doll,
The limestone Goddess she now
Cradled in the palm of her hand.

Each night for centuries she labored for them,
Each twilight she rose from her own doll-box,
Lightly dusting them with the feather duster
Given her by Queen Victoria’s maid, along
With the little dolls loved by Dear Vicky herself.
Now these were her family, her human family long gone,
Her undead descendants scattered to the four corners,
More interested in feeding, and scaring, and dominating.

But she would go on, till time itself retired. She would sit, and look forever
Young, she would Etsy and eBay and surf for more treasures,
She would curate, and organize, and subscribe to journals and
Make repairs, and sew impossibly tiny seams and
Restring limbs too delicate to survive, though they did,

And she, and her charges, would endure, seeking
Refuge in her immortal haven of Misfit dolls.