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      July 16, 2015Orange Groves & Fairy TalesDiane Wakoski

      The little house of paper dolls, barely visible in
      the sea of orange groves, lighted only by the stumbling
      flames of a trash fire
      The little house of high heels, damp with surfer’s
      bone-blond hair, with no illumination
      except moonlight, and that reflected on a Frisbee
      The house of sailors and drunks,
      the house where she hid in a closet with her book,
      the house with pink flamingoes on the living room mirror
      the house where the piano sat upright like an old maid
      at a dance
      These houses, never with spacious stairways
      or silver on the sideboards, never
      with black Steinways, their lids open
      to silk and cigar smoke,
      never the book-paneled rooms
      with old oak, leather,
      no port in a storeroom, she was not even
      Daddy’s girl, just the child shaped like a shawl,
      thick ankles and wrists, old-woman child,
      a little witch
      in a little house,
      in the woods—actually,
      in Southern California we
      call them orange
      groves.

      from Issue #13 - Summer 2000