041120

I Want To Start Over

My sister and I

stumble over roots,

their knobs and gnarls

catch our bruised feet;
branches reach for us,

their claws catch in hair or sweater;

I hear

no footsteps behind us now,

but we’ve been running for so long,

the light’s fading,
and the hut,
should we ever reach it,
will not have gum drops and candy canes,

no shingles of sugar-laced gingerbread,

but a pair of restless, filthy chicken feet,

and a wicked beak,
while behind us,
black birds
have long since eaten
every crumb of bread

we left to mark our path.

122619c

the gingerbread house remains
though the forest dried up and blew away
when the climate changed
two children
trudging across the dunes
she is waiting

020318b

The Sweet Cleaner

“You what?”

“I won't pay. This is highway robbery. You quoted one shilling and now you want six.”

Clinton fumed. The old witch wouldn't pay. The gum drop encrustation alone had taken him two hours to chisel off. Altogether he had spent the entire day on her cottage, which by the way was way the heck out in the middle of the forest, so there had been no place to buy lunch. All he had had was part of a stale gum drop. But there was nothing you could do. The forest was frontier territory as far as law enforcement was concerned. Out here, you took matters into your own hands. And when you were not not a witch or a magical creature, you kept those hands in your pockets and said “Yes ma'am, no ma'am.” But you never went back to that freakin' candy cottage again.

“Yes ma'am. But it took longer than I expected. And I have a family to feed.”

–

“And then she started asking me all these questions about the kids. How old they were, what their names were, what they liked to eat, with their favorite sweets were. It was creepy. A little lower on the left.”

The backrub had been going a long way towards making Clinton feel better about his day, but when he described the witch's reaction to mention of the children, his wife froze. Clinton wiggled his shoulders, but she didn't take the hint.

"What part of 'don't mention that you have children' didn't you understand?" She asked. Her hands clutched his shoulders convulsively. He bit back a cry of pain. "Did you say where you live? This is a witch we're talking about, not some inoffensive peasant."

"Please," he snorted. "Credit me with some sense. I told her we live on Cabbage St.; completely the other side of town."

Eventually she calmed down, but she stayed up all night, on watch, in the children's room. In the morning he made breakfast and almost pointed out to her that he had been right. You kids had been safe. The witch ... had done nothing.

Almost, he said those things. When the crier came by a couple of hours later with the shocking news that two children had been abducted from a home just across town, he was glad he kept his mouth shut.

010618b

The Icing On The Hut

She skims the cookies from the morning pool,

The chocolate syrup dripping from the net,

She lays them out to dry so carefully,

There’s chocolate chip and chocolate raisin too,

She fells the mighty marzipan and saws

It into disks; for roofing, almond bark,

Spun sugar gathered from sweet spiders’ webs

Becomes white curtains woven through the night.

It’s worth the time and risk of ant attack,

Those monstrous hexapods that stalk the Wood,

If she can lure plump children to her door,

She doesn’t want to eat them; heavens no!

She’ll have apprentices by hook or crook,

And drink their sweetened ichor when they’re ripe.

111214

Blanche


“Mother” hated her from the day they met:
Blanche looking down, hair blowing free,
“Mother” shooting curses with every furrow-browed stare,
her own son dead (she could have no more);
the King didn't care: he had Blanche.

Fairest in the land, no magic needed to see that,
fairest till down the tower stair she flew,
awoke in a shuttered room: _Log-Legs_, they called her,
tho none visited save stable-boy Tim,
her playmate from when they were small.

He'd been gone a week, her asking, asking,
“Mother” said _he did it_, with a casual head toss,
_must've, else why'd he run
when I had the Sherriff question him?_

Run.

Princess L-L worked on her sticks,
back and forth like a shuttle,
grinding out her name in fury
at the weary pain of it.

One day “Mother” rides out in pageantry,
L.-L. hobble-jumps all the way, stair by stair,
is barrowed forestward by Tim's charcoal burner da,
sticks her way deep in, to a clearing,
sees a smoke-plumed hut, and Tim at the gate,
“Tisn't much,” he says, but... “Hush,
“a gingerbread house all over candy,
“or perambulating castle'd tempt me not;
“I'd pass it by, were you not in it.
“Belike it'd be witch-haunted anyway.”

101014

trees lean in
to the dwindling track
bread crumbs getting low