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| Christina Rosetti, The Holy Grail |
Through the looking glass, so shiny and new,
how quickly the glamor fades.
I start spinning, slipping out of time.
Was that the wrong pill to take?
Raise it up!
You've made a deal,
and now it seems you have to offer up.
Raise it up!
Raise it up!
Ritual will always mean throwing away something; destroying our corn or wine upon the altar of our gods.Here was so much of what is poignant, mysterious, and real about myth, fairy tale, and legend.
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| artist unknown, found here |
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| artist unknown |
Huddled, our plumed bodies curve
in arabesque. Convex vertebrae
are charms; they
ward off the dark and cold.
We pass tales like glass
marbles back-and-forth,
in pinched beaks. Friction
warms our palms, our words.
Prometheus, have pity.
Breath ignites
salvaged kindling, a spark
as hot as a pin-prick.
Now we chant each others' stories,
a noisome flock in blanketing
gray and whisper a rumor
of dawn.
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| P.J. Lynch, The Six Swans |
The True Poem
The true poem
though spoken in
human tongue
is pronounced
with the lisp
of a fox growling
over a dead rabbit.
The true poem,
even when typed
on a computer,
is inscribed
in the rabbit's blood
by a quill
from a crow's wing.
Its letters are read
not by the eyes
but by the ends
of the nerves,
as Braille is read
by fingertips.
The Lady
and Her lover
trail through the poem,
their footprints
fading in the drying dew.
They pass
the crossroads
under the beam
of the Hanging Tree.
The white doe
watches from the hedges
of wild roses.
The true poem
may seem slight
but the must of
wild mushrooms
and leaf mold
worm through the lines.
As if Grandmother Spider
crawled over his nape,
the reader shivers.
seaweed growing serpentine through her hair,
undulating and hypnotic
The moon
caressing her skin
with cold light.
Pressed down by the weight of water
My mother measures worth
in tidiness
how other people measure flour--
packed tight on the tipping scale--
in seconds spent bent over
steaming, screaming dishes
and strokes of the sticky-handled,
stiffened broom;
soggy potato peels collected for the
wormy compost;
hours wiping dull windows until
they disappear;
ironing pleated trousers
'til they stand on end;
intercepting dandelions
tiptoeing into the hedgerows;
inching together the seams of sheets
and flattening the breath out of them upon
the bed.
The earlier you rise, the later
you work, the better she knows:
the more staggering the contrast between
before-and-after,
like two color photographs on a double-page
home improvement ad--
the better to consider your humanity, my dear.
A jeweler weighs gold;
she balances solid value with
intrinsic density.
Now you tell me:
who is the stepmother and who
is Cinderella?
knife, bowl, clothcreased from disusegrubby faces like cherubs' headsawait the miraculouscuresacred instruments(sword, grail, shroud)each plantedupon the altarclouds rumble but do notbreak fastobjects scatteredbefore the glacier-timehave been gatheredto tablewho will draw firstthe chalice to chapped lips?drink?seeds burstjuices flowthe waste land holdsits breath
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| Paul Gauguin, The Meal |
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| Twelve Dancing Princesses |
 |
| from Sleeping Beauty |
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| Snow White and Rose Red |
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| Titania and Oberon |
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| Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs |
 |
| Hansel and Gretel |
Here I stand, glittering
and cold as a breathless fish.
Paradoxically, I aim to smolder, to catch
a spark and ignite.
Kiss me, don't look closely
at the waxy sheen preserving
rotting cells and brittle sinews.
This glamor lasts past midnight,
as long as you fancy.
So let me help you believe
my sunrise ancestors didn't
strike the heart like a poison
spear. I will love you (feebly)
into damnation. One day, you'll wake
in musty sheets, bloodless like an insect,
and wonder when the guts went out
of sinning.
She asked for honey,
clover honey deep in the mouths of snow.
The prince kept bees. The merchant took
comb after comb until the prince
stood on the parapet, throat full of thorns.
She ate the honey, vowed to go
live with the prince among fountains and books,
blue-lit votives, gilded birds, statues that dance
when the moon hooks the night. The prince
never strayed into the morning. They dined
by dim tapers and laughed to soften the quiet.
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| John Dickson Batten, Beauty and the Beast |
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| copyright Lissie Elle Laricchia |
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| Lucy Crane,The Elves and the Shoemaker |
Cobblers will tell you.
Bleary-eyed and woe-worn,
they drag themselves to bed
after the evening news,
a kaleidoscope of disjointed fragments:
treaties broken like twigs
over the knees of bullies;
laws devoured by smirking politicians who
dab their lips with a napkin;
peace toppled from a lofty wall
(all the king's men couldn't put it back together);
lives unraveled, children shed
like dead skin, putting Laius to shame.
Cobblers will tell you:
the making's gone out of them.
Slumber delivers.
The following morning,
after dry toast and black
coffee, the craftsman finds
upon the tidy work bench
supple leather of lordly red,
embroidered, fastened with brass
buttons and fixed with sturdy soles. He beholds
the glorious shoes.
Where did they come from--
rather, how could they be?
Magic worked in the night,
sewing, mending, singing.
Limbs reanimate. Art lives.
It might as well have been elves
that made them.
I lie snow-
sleeping, my black hair brittle
branches, mirroring roots, [can't be both branches and roots]
in winter. Glass
surrounds me, my productive fingers [too abstract?]
still. I have swallowed last summer's
bitter apple and [cliche?]
died. But inside, my hands
still work away, sewing,
coaxing; drawing from the deep
and dark, dreams unfold. A prince [needs more]
arrives to kiss me, tell me
Wake up!Thespring
has come.
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| artist unknown |
I am porcelain
encased in glass. Snow-
sleeping I lie, twisted hair dark
as roots, fertile fingers limp
and robbed of rose-buds.
I have swallowed last summer's
green and acrid apple.
But inside, ghost hands
still work, sewing, furrowing,
coaxing, and drawing from the deep
and dark. Dreams unravel, until
inside this case, I am
teeming and ripe. The bitter seed
died, and I grew
a golden orchard.
A prince arrives to kiss, to
prune, to tell me
Wake up! Spring
has come.
All rivers reflect the Shannon;For Magpie Tales, a first draft. As always, constructive criticism desired and appreciated.
that old dame who bares swans
like white, scalloped cups.
I sipped her
offering, then jogged
in a chilled morn as thick as gelatin, bursting
through clouds of mote-flies and pockets
of lingering, sinking winter.
Relic walls run avenues of garbled stories to scribes,
disguised as rubble-towers, who guard
the old reservoir.
I made a gift of one of mine,
dropped it, hope-filled, as if I cast
a bottled message, sealed
from the current-voices.
Now when I meet a river
(it dips, I nod
a greeting), I scan its rippled
face for a wink--for a bobbing--for a delivery;
word from the source.
