Monday, June 12, 2023

LET HER WEAR GREEN

by Tricia Knoll


Did the ‘Barbie’ Movie Cause a Pink Paint Shortage? The film recreates the famous doll’s brightly colored world—with the help of one specific shade of pink. —Smithsonian, June 8, 2023


Witness a shortage 
of pink paint
from the set design
of a Barbie movie. 
 
Let her wear green
for chlorophyll,
eco-warrior for a hurting
planet short on good sense
 
as cancer drugs are hard
to come by. This rainbow
month colors fly
 
on flagpoles and banners. 
I’m so sick of pink. The only
Barbie I have sits in a wheelchair;
she is a woman of color
 
beautiful color. 


Barbie Fashionistas Doll #166 With Wheelchair & Crimped Brunette Hair


Tricia Knoll is a Vermont poet well beyond Barbie years. Her work appears widely in journals, anthologies, and seven collections—the most recent being One Bent Twig (FutureCycle Press, 2023) which brings together poems about about trees she has planted, loved, or worries about due to climate change.