print previewback BRUCE BOND
Ventriloquist
It started with a doll, a woman,
who could have been his child and was
when, at times, his voice grew small
to go the places he could not go
alone. And like a child, the doll
had a hand for a heart that made her,
by charm of distant instinct, say
the things she never meant to say.
Nor did he for that matter,
whose arm vanished in her back
as if reaching through a mirror
or the sapwood of an old tree
to find the god transfigured there.
It was only a matter of time,
the day he would throw his voice
like a coin in a fountain
and lose it to the wish he made.
The gods would see to that, they
who know how a wish begins
with a hole in the body,
a burning question that has no answer,
but still you ask it, still you
breathe it into the leafy voices
of the trees, dead and alive,
as if they were the earth that made them
speak and yours to give away. 
Allegiance
Ventriloquist