The Robot's Daughter
by JoSelle Vanderhooft

They made her,
        skin silicon and entrail steel;
They made her,
        gear-clack joint and grease-bang blood.
For the clockwork man they made her
race and laugh like any little girl.
They made her
        pink dress flounce, tea party twitch
        blue eyed and impeccably pigtailed as though
        the scald rains never fell.

They made her
        piece by dream and dream of peace,
and he was made
to play along.

(Such was there need for machines of grace
now memory itself burned carcinomic black.)

They made it,
        glass and alloy dining room.
They made it,
        silverware and gingham blue.
For the burning and the burned they made it
        cocoon-sparkle, television timeless,
        cozy, cozy almost Christmas, just as if
        the scald rains never fell.

They made it,
        portraiture of innocence,
        and girl and man were made
        for being seen.

(Such was their fondness
for all unspoiled things.)

What better art could be,
they asked themselves.
What beauty more than rain day finger paints,
homework banter, midnight-sneaking feasts,
father-daughter
tabletop clasped hands?

What better art, they thought,
than white fence past?
Just like paradise,
just like the threads you grasp at upon waking.
What better art
than what you wish to be?
Atom-scarred and sterile
they all watched the robots’ room
wanting-numb,
cathode-transfixed.

Such was their fondness for these little dreams
in the days after the scald rains
when men and women burned like batteries
and picked up misery like antenna.
In these radium-lit time
he watched them
stare and sigh like the overfed approaching sleep.

He watched them,
        epidermal slough and entrail twist.
He watched them,
        stiffen joint and congeal blood.
He watched them
        crumble piece by piece
        after the scald rains fell.
Through the polished glass
he watched them
        transmit each scream
        and fade like fireworks.
He watched them,
        and the blue-eyed clockwork man
        vowed his tick-tock girl would not inherit this.

He watched her
        leg-swing at the kitchen table
        and swore the white-top world would pass to her.

(Such was his fondness
for their fantasies.)