PRINCESS DIARIES NO. 10:

Fathoms below indigo, I spy the faint shimmer

of a single pearl.

My friend said

go get yourself the Barbie they wouldn’t let you keep

and so I found myself

wandering the bright white aisles of a Target.

Skeining through the coral-pink canyon of the girls’

toy section, shame rises, subsides. It’s fine, I think.

I just look like somebody’s Dad. More likely,

their gay uncle. Relaxing into this current

I’m drawn along, from Birthday Wishes Barbie

in tulle ruffles & pearlescent barrettes,

to Princess Adventures Barbie

with platform sandals & cat-eye sunglasses

to Space Discovery Astronaut Barbie

with shimmery spacesuit, space boots & helmet,

a pennant that reads Barbie on the Moon,

& I begin to wonder— is this rainbow capitalism

or Utopia? High glamour, feminist physicists—

bread & roses on the same shelf?

& while musing through the pink slipstream, adrift

in the raft of my cute critique, I see her:

Barbie Dreamtopia Rainbow Magic Mermaid

in a neon-bright fantasy look with a tiara

in her rainbow hair,

a multi-colored tail and a bodice with sea-inspired accents

& remember the childhood pang of impossible desire—

how quickly I learned to cope, to pass—

how I substituted one thing for another:

the mermaid I desperately wanted

for a color-changing Hot Wheels

I could live with

though at its core not want but need

& yes it was the color but also the change:

the ice cold plunge transfiguring an object

from dull everydayness

to a more improbable spectrum—

a phosphorescence found only at depth,

a brightness

muted & immutable,

waiting to be seen.