The Little Poem that Couldn't

Have you ever written a poem you liked a lot, but that nobody would ever, ever publish no matter how much you tried? Well, that's the theme of this month's entry. I always put a fresh batch of magazine and journal submissions together in January, and instead of trying one more time to get the poem below published, I'm giving up and choosing to post it here instead. Basically, I want to know why nobody wants it.



The Stepford Widow

After the dollmaker’s death, we tried
to find his suicidal wife—
under every high window there
was a life-sized porcelain model of her.
A decapitation in the kitchen,
torso on the floor and head in the oven,
all clothed in Victorian lace.
Hard whiteness under a veil of light—
a dead man’s ideal of womanhood
from which the widow banished herself.
Who can live on when the man
who played god, or Pygmalion, enters
his own perfection, no longer mediating
between the human and pristine beauty?
She hangs in effigy from the rafters,
but she has vanished all the same.
Had she been a prisoner all this time?
Or was there a narcissism that kept her here
till her charmed admirer was gone;
and was she ashamed to be left alone
with her twins and an archaic dream?
And will these dolls, suddenly reminded
of their firm, artificial limbs,
rise and let themselves be guided,
like Stepford wives, to unbroken homes?

Is it obscure? I thought most would know what a Stepford Wife was, and thus could imagine a Stepford widow. Perhaps I'm wrong, or perhaps the poem just doesn't work on some other level. It's weird, because for me it was all very compelling: the images were vivid and commanding as I wrote, and the ending unforced.

I suppose there's a danger in writing an obviously "feminist" poem like this one, especially if you're not a woman. And especially if the message isn't entirely clear, which it may not be here. If I had to boil it down, I'd say the poem's about the dangers that being an artist can pose to other people (one's "Muse," for instance).