Today's poem is by Nancy Eimers

Four Mannequins with Suitcases, Dressed for Success
       

I understand raindrops
        can distort the song of birds
so we may not know which direction
        the song is coming from,

but I don't understand the uncanny valley,
        the changeless faces of mannequins
or the factory owner who says
        she walks among their bodies

at night and is not afraid.
        Can they even be said
to have bodies? Made
        with care, she says, made individually

and I'm hearing affection not unlike
        how birds in cages begin to sing
when the shower comes on.
        Whatever they hear must resemble

something important by instinct;
        bodies, yes, in the sense of giving
form to what was once
        abstract. For instance, four mannequins

in travelwear, each figure's attitude
        an ode to patience, same as wasted
time, same timetable to read, same train
        about to come—the window sign Vogue

Suggests . . . then words too small
        to read without a telescope.
This might have mattered,
        what we wore on earth, faces they wore,

that bright alert urbanity
        makes out of poise—
and why we wanted them
        that way. The factory workers are sanding

haunches and torsos, tops of heads,
        anywhere a mannequin gets round
and the workers seem to do this respectfully,
        I swear. Of course they know

they are being filmed. A gentle roar
        is how I do not want
to describe the sound of falling water
        heard at a distance. Dull

instead of gentle doesn't get us
        any closer in a shopping mall
to why the mannequins all are headless now;
        headless has happened before,

it will happen again.
        We are passing through
yet another definition of apperception
        I do not quite understand,

instinct, a "prompting,"
        maybe why the heart recoils at what
resembles such composure—bright faces,
        pointless gestures—never to suppose

an end to come, not even lightly.

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Copyright © 2022 Nancy Eimers All rights reserved
from Human Figures
New Michigan Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission