Merrill Oliver Douglas
Poetry
Merrill Oliver Douglas’s first full-length collection, Persephone Heads For the Gate, won the 2022 Gerald Cable Book Award from Silverfish Review Press. She is also the author of the poetry chapbook Parking Meters into Mermaids (Finishing Line Press, 2020). Her poems have appeared in Barrow Street, Tar River Poetry, Stone Canoe, SWWIM Every Day, RockPaperPoem, Verse Daily, and Whale Road Review, among others. She lives near Binghamton, New York.
Mannequins on Smoke Break
Headless, soap-white, nude,
they cluster on the loading dock
behind Old Navy. Don’t they get bored
with their breasts, all formed in the same mold?
Here one stands with hands on hips,
as if she’s rendered a decision.
One takes a first slow step toward the stairs.
A third, perhaps annoyed at the sight
of the dumpster parked close by,
has turned from the others and fumes
near the tan wall. Not one scar
among them, not one lick of fading summer
strap mark or pucker of doubt on a thigh.
“ I spotted these mannequins on a stretch of my town’s rail trail that runs behind a strip mall. ”
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