Vol 11, Num 15 :: 2012.07.20 — 2012.08.02
i)
Once upon a time, we
believed the stories.
These things happen, we thought.
By our calculations and the law of averages,
it’s our turn next.
I find myself going through the cartons at the supermarket,
scanning the eggs for gold…
but, no, not today.
Just down the aisle,
the ground beef is still giving me the silent treatment.
I’d be mad, too, if someone traded me in
for a bag of beans.
One of the beans started to grow,
but it died after two days.
Magic? My ass.
At the check-out counter,
Cinderella smiles down on me
from the cover of People,
her perfect teeth gleaming like an advertisement,
trying to sell me the dream.
I feel like telling her: you know,
my mice never make me any clothes, and
I’ve had just about enough of the bullshit.
ii)
It’s the same crowd here every week.
Somehow we keep coming back,
telling our stories, nodding at the next guy’s.
The fairy godmother is bussing tables,
flitting here and there,
wiping up other people’s messes.
She steps behind the counter when she sees me there
and rasps: “What’ll it be?”
I feel like saying to her:
how about a pumpkin carriage and a pair of glass slippers,
but instead I just purse my lips and order a cup of coffee.
Mister man sits down at my table
like a sack of oats
and I know he’s still depressed.
Last week he got swindled out of a bunch of lumber,
and the week before someone stole
a crop of hay bales right off his field.
Today he tells me about this stuttering little pig
who tricked him into selling an entire load of bricks
at a fraction of their value.
I feel like telling him: buck up, i mean,
my goodness, if you let a little pig boss you around…
but i just shake my head and buy him a drink.
I’m not trying to eavesdrop, but
I can hear the frog and her friend talking
at the table next to mine.
She’s sitting there with a bucket of tadpoles,
short on sleep and money but needing a friend.
Her man ran away with some princess, and
here she is, pissed off and lonely,
with the rest of us.
Yeah, it’s a fairy-tale world out there.
iii)
I’m down at a local dive, now.
Somewhere I won’t be recognized, and
where I won’t recognize anyone;
I don’t come here often.
Right now I’m just looking for a space
where I’m not breathing the heartache of friends.
Anonymous pain I can handle.
I have to concentrate
on not taking an interest in anyone here.
Avoid all eyes.
It’s only faceless pain until you connect with someone.
My tabletop is sticky with spilled beer,
and the lights are low;
I try to keep my eyes down, focused on nothing,
but they keep wandering.
I find with a sinking feeling that
I know some of these people after all.
I can see the Brothers Grimm across the way,
bellied up to the bar, staring into their beer.
I get up and start towards the door but
it’s too late—I’m starting to recognize everybody.
An old man with a tarnished crown
pulls at my sleeve and I pretend I don’t know him.
“I’m the king,” he says, and I go, “Oh, yeah?”
and he tells me about how his new son-in-law
hates him and has driven him out of the palace.
I feel like telling him that
that’s what he gets for being so stupid.
“Whoever makes my daughter laugh can marry her,” indeed.
There’s a lot of bad men who are very, very funny.
But maybe I’m just bitter because she
didn’t even crack a smile at my jokes.
I buy him a beer to shut him up
and as the bartender pulls my change,
I can see that the register is full of golden eggs.
Someone’s been drinking away a lot of magic.
I’m still trying to get away from the king
when this red-eyed sow walks in.
She looks both ways as if she’s not sure she’s welcome,
and then orders a shot of whiskey and drinks it straight.
Turns out all three of her babies
just got ten years with no parole for boiling a wolf alive.
This young guy on the other side of the bar
suddenly throws his pitcher off the table and yells
something I can’t quite understand.
I watch him as he sinks down with his head in his hands,
and from beside me comes this soft voice.
“That’s Snow White’s husband.”
I turn and see this girl, and she’s gorgeous,
but bald as cancer and with her left eye all bruised.
I sit down across from her and she tells me the story.
This guy had kissed Snow White and she woke up, and
like the story goes, they got married, but
she’d been lying there so long waiting for him that her
muscles had atrophied. So she was bedridden
for a while, and then went into a coma.
Last night, I guess they pulled the plug.
The girl across from me says her name is Rapunzel.
She’s here for some time away from her lover;
she doesn’t say his name, but
she tells me she loves him, how
it’s her fault his eyes got scratched out.
She’s quiet for a moment, and then she says,
“He doesn’t mean to do it,”
fingering all around her eye socket.
I feel like I should say something,
but I can’t think of what.
They don’t make bedtime stories like they used to.
iv)
It’s the next day and
I’m sitting out here in the sunshine.
Last night on the way home,
I was walking by this man who
was all dressed in rags, and I was
just about past him when I remembered
something that the Jester told me after Rapunzel left:
the magic is always in disguise —
the poor man is always king,
the helpless have the power,
the last is first.
That’s how it works.
So, I stopped in my tracks,
half-expecting him to tell me that I had to kiss him
and he’d turn into something amazing,
or to propose that if I guessed his name,
he’d spin my hair into gold,
steel wool,
anything.
We stared at each other for a moment, and
then his mouth broke open in this
snaggle-toothed grin, and
he winked.
That’s all.
As I look up at a handful
of clouds bobbing across the surface of the sky,
I wonder:
Maybe we don’t need to climb a beanstalk to heaven.
Maybe heaven is down here
waiting to come to life
in the midst of all our rotten teeth.
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