Window Dressing

The woman in the window
banged off plastic arms, twisting
the waist loose, then shimmied silk
dresses over hard shoulders and hips.
Arms reattached. The quick zip.
She loved the heads the best, the way
she could remove the skull cap,
reach in to adjust the backs
of the eyes, then face them where they
needed to look. In spring, she’d
link them with silk tulips,
gardenias and leaves. Outside,
shoppers stopped to peer through slips
in the grey muslin and vowed to return.
Inside the resin women stared
into the wall of glass, that vacant
wishful look almost like they were
expecting the men from the opposite
window to save them, their chiseled chins
glowing like lighthouses. The children
at their feet with their baskets
and bonnets, their bright maryjanes,
wondered, long after the curtain fell,
if anyone would notice them, see
how their hunger lingered long
after the light spilled
into the street below them.