Plastic Pink Palace by AJ Standish (Michigan, 22)

​when I was young I played
with my plastic pink palace
constructing a monarchy,
and a class system at five,
determining who would have
the pretty bedroom
with the window
who would be a princess
who would cook,
with barefoot plastic feet
in a small fake kitchen
near tiny plastic rats

The female dolls wore dresses
that snapped off their bodies
revealing clothes less
pretty and poofy,
I married them off
to possessive plastic men
who fought wars
for the king
​
I had a playset
with a carriage and
white horses,
the driver came
holding a plastic whip

​I chewed on the end
because it felt good in my mouth
and then I used it
on microscopic plastic bodies
I pried open the roof
to use as a dungeon
Lined my plastic
pink palace
with miniature soldiers

Playing in
a caucasian christian girl’s
early 2000’s haze
royalty obsession phase
saturated in the stories
I was given
and blinded by the life
I was living

All the while I felt
absolutely no remorse
because if my twisted
monarchal mayhem
existed in the real world
I simply assumed
without thinking
that I would be a princess,
kept away from all the chaos
near the still, unmoving
fake fountain,
​
Under the deep green plastic
of a garden hedge
with removable
white and pink roses





AJ Standish is a 22-year-old freelance writer who loves poetry and nature as much as Emily Dickinson loved women (they love women too.) AJ is deeply interested in how art and creativity inform our collective reality and perception of it. When they’re not writing, they’re at their part-time barista job or at home in Michigan with their girlfriend and cat. ​