Joe Dolce: Three Poems

Lullaby for a Battered Child

Toys in darkness far away,

shining in a box in my mind,

just beyond my reach.

Mama’s sleeping, Daddy’s not here,

they can’t hear us, in our secret hiding,

just you and me.

Punished children soon grow up,

mixed up feelings, emotions,

they don’t want to know.

Someone hurt me long ago,

still inside me, someone loves me now,

I don’t want to go.

Joe Dolce

Photographing Black Wallabies

By the time I raised the lens, they had gone,

the black wallabies on the track today,

I missed the photograph—except this one.

Careening to right and left, coming down

the hill, in front of the car, and away,

by the time I raised the lens, they had gone.

They darted along the edges of brown,

like circles, in the fluid of sight, play,

I missed the photograph—except this one.

The sky was pink, the sun had spun down—

coming to drink at the low waterway—

by the time I raised the lens, they had gone.

A rufous orange stained the wide chest of one,

except the tip of its tail, which was grey,

I missed the photograph—except this one.

So swiftly, through the high ferns, they were drawn,

to the water, heads low and tails out straight,

by the time I raised the lens, they had gone,

I missed the photograph—except this one.

Joe Dolce

Genius of Earlswood

James Henry Pullen, inmate of

The National Home for the Feeble-Minded,

(previously known as Earlswood Asylum

for Idiots and Imbeciles),

skilled artist, model maker,

classified as “idiot savant”,

diagnosis later changed to deafness and communication disorder

(he read lips but could only pronounce one word, mother),

appointed carpenter, by hospital superintendent,

Dr John Langdon Down (of Down Syndrome),

allowed to eat with staff (Pullen disliked one so much,

he built a guillotine-device over his door),

supplied with a personal exhibition space,

and workshop (which he destroyed once in a fit

of rage) where he designed and made specialised tools,

a ten-foot model of Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s iron steamship,

the SS Great Eastern, including 5,585 rivets

and thirteen lifeboats, took seven years, and was exhibited,

in 1851, at the Crystal Palace Exhibition.

He constructed a large, mechanical mannequin,

The Giant, in the centre of his room, and sat

inside it, moving its face and arms,

“talking” through a bugle in its mouth.

Queen Victoria accepted his drawings,

and future King Edward VII (whom Pullen referred to

as Friend Wales), sent him ivory to carve.

Falling from a high scaffolding,

he broke a leg, resigning himself

to painting and furniture-making,

including beds, for the asylum.

Joe Dolce