Faerie Tales...

I watched my favorite Disney film last night and felt the need to look up "faerie tale poems" for everyone today. The Journal of Mythic Arts pulled up a bonanza! The archive even had a Beauty and the Beast poem by the late Jaimes Alsop. (My fav faerie tale, in case you didn't guess)

"Beauty and the Beast" by Jaimes Alsop

1. The Beast

Knowing how you loved the birds
I fixed them to the trees
so they wouldn't fly away.
So you would stay.

And you remained silent
and never questioned my bloody palms
or reproached me the birds
because they didn't sing.
It couldn't last, of course.
No new birds came and those crucified
were taken by small animals or simply
disappeared from the nails.
I was sure then that you would leave me.

Finally I confessed.
Trembling, I brought you the hammer
and showed my broken fingers.
Leaves and branches in my hair,
the diagrams of Autumn
on the sky.

And you smiled and said it didn't matter
about the birds
and drank at my tears
like a rare and fragile wine
that they too would not be wasted.


2. Beauty

I came to you so carelessly
there were those who thought I had not been warned.
I could only point to the false lovers who carried marks
where you had pressed coins into their palms
and admit I was impatient for your scars.

The rumours followed us as easily
as if you murdered me every night;
hemlock in my evening wine,
a loosened bannister on the stair.
The dull villagers and daft princes
waited still and at distances
for grave news and relentless
until I could only point again
at their jealous eyes and whisper
I had discovered why you handled me
as though I were made of glass.

I know they want to know about our bodies.
Our virginity confuses them
and they are reduced to words and silences.
What shall we allow them to believe?

We are a thousand years old, no histories
and nothing to confess.
 

"Shirt of Nettles, House of Thorns"
by Nathalie F. Anderson

in awed esteem for Alice Maher
who made these things

1. Strange Seed
You plant the strange seed to see how it grows—
a beanstalk to the clouds, a better tomato,
poison apple, deadly nightshade, kudzu—
always a surprise. So the little ruddy rose hip

yawns into a peony; the grain of salt
takes fire, puffs out its cheeks of glass; the seed pearl
complicates in porcelain crinolines;
splinters thicken to hard block; the dust bunny

kicked and wincing, forgotten under the bed,
rowls itself into the junk–yard dog—that's it
in a nutshell: each snail distilling
the cowl on its back, the husk it was born to.


2. House of Thorns
A nest for Thumbelina nestled into moss,
pied–á–terre among the pommes–de–terre,
basking and burnished as a cinnamon cat
licked into spits and glossy with tending.

Look again: it's the bristling boll of sweet–gum or
sycamore or buck–eye—some spurred species—squared
to a folk profile: peaked roof, high gable
spiky with thorn—a closed house, impervious,

leathering into prickly isolation.
Where's the girl ripe for piercing, who shuttered
her windows and latched fast her doors? Where's the chink
to press an eye to? Where's the coy lip to kiss?

Oh prince, rip your hands, rip your heart out. Someone
walked through the briars with her eyes wide open,
laying her hand deliberately against each thorn—
thick at the base, fanged at the tip, each cat–claw
picked for its perfection, slicing the thumb to the bone. Someone dried them, aligned them,
mortared them straight. Someone knew you'd come looking.
She built that house, made that bed, walked away.


3. Shirt of Nettles
Thick in the thicket gooseberries hung their lanterns
from two–inch spines; raspberries ripened into jam
on razor–edged canes. She held the gloves out
so disparagingly, you saw you couldn't win.

Ringed round by thrusting briars muscled thick as snakes,
there's not much scope for turning. Bees laced themselves
through the fretwork. The smug smile: "It's only nettles." Your hands
puffed white with the sting. Blackbirds in the hawthorn,

beaks open for the bite. Between morning
and evening a quick snap of the tongue: fling out
the changeling cursed with a quickness
too sharp for her own good. Imagine going wittingly

to pluck the nettle, leaves caught in an apron
and every slightest brush a skin–popping shock. Greening,
flattening, pinning, stitching—bite your pillow,
claw at the air, skin welting along the spine and rib

of each fine seam, each particular leaf. How long
before you strip it off, bled light as a feather—
a pain you made to grow out of,
something for Good Will, last year's fashion.


4. Ever After
Once upon a time—as long ago as that
and all forgiven. The curb falls from the tongue;
eyes cry themselves to clarity; the girl
wakes up, runs to the window, brushes
her glowing hair. But close your eyes and
it's the flay tongue, it's the whip hand, it's
the acid bath, the scald eye, the happy
ever after: fanged house, shirt of flame.

 
Take a look at The Journal of Mythic Arts for inspiration and magick!
https://endicottstudio.typepad.com/jomahome/