After Juliet Cook’s The Spindle Girls

In the hospital waiting room

all of the dolls lackluster

they shine on to a boy named

Milton.

Milton lay the dolls down

in a circle on the floor:

An asylum solar system.

Mildred disintegrates in sun.

Pauline evaporates on Mars.

Joyce drowns on Neptune

and so on.

Milton plays all over the

bodies for a fortnight.

The horses whinny.

Peregrines crash the windows.

On the 7th day

Milton the grave maker

tapes each mouth shut and

drops them from the 4th floor

Laboratory window.

The limbs and necks burst into feathers

blow across the yard

into the mouths of stable hands

eager to light up a torso.