Poetry Feature
Claudia Carlson
Advice for Youngest Sons in Fairytales
Forget the farm,
the mill, the back five acres,
the kingdom--
you won't inherit.
Go out into the world,
through the unruly woods,
take the path,
help old women carry water,
free the fox from the trap,
untangle the flounder from the net;
they are your deferred income.
Be brave, but especially be a fool.
The story demands that you forget yourself
and ask for everything.
Be assured, the princess prefers
your uncluttered grin
to the responsible frown
of an eldest brother.
Sleeping Beauty Has Words
(c) 2001 Claudia Carlson
Sleeping Beauty Has Words
Did you imagine I dozed a near eternity
On a silent bed?
Under the thin linens sharp words
Pricked my skin.
All the sounds of living and dying
Troubled my sleep.
Random as: pippin, astrolabe, and plow
Full as: caul, hearth, and rye
Fool as: sonnet, pilgrimage, and joy
Sudden as: thorn, sword, and spindle
Sad as: plague, curse, and noose.
The syllables formed into dreams
As hard and daft as fate
I lived a thousand lives!
But no grimace or smile tugged my lip.
I was the effigy of a soul
In a rose-scented room
A bas-relief in dust, mute as marble.
When the Prince gawped over me
Tumbling his words.
"Ah, sweet goddess, princess, virgin --
you and your wealth, and so on -- I claim thee."
I heard his dreams.
Soft as: pupil, bride, and wife
Loud as: savior, master, and king.
He caressed crinkling satin over pristine skin,
never sensing my heart blunt with care and sharp with use.
Rumpelstiltskin Keeps Mum
(c) 2001 Claudia Carlson
Rumplestiltskin Keeps Mum
He was able to make hay into ore.
He was able to make peasant into queen.
He was not able to make rise the rumpled
skin between his parenthetic legs.
As if he ever needed her insignificant dowry.
Amber beads? Her little ring? No, he needed
someone to teach the lexicon he knew;
a student, a scribe, an heir, this infant son
codified in royal flesh.
He's keeping mum.
Let her ask, his name is buried.
The power in names is well documented.
Rosetta Stone junkies and the code breakers,
all those efforts at making a key
turn when he, he was ready to stop
turning. Too weary, too lame, his past
misquoted and plagiarized,
he was now Mr. Anonymous.
He had read the scrolls and hieroglyphs.
He knew the cliff where the phoenix rose.
He picked the herbs a hedgewitch picks.
The libraries of Alexandria still burned in his eyes.
Let other men tear bindings, pillage
language, spread words like fleas.
Let women grunt their syllables of forcing
new souls to repeat the words of the world.
He'd never tell,
He's keeping mum.
(Claudia Carlson was born in Indiana and raised in college towns all over the U.S. She has worked as a quilt designer, calligrapher, book designer, mapmaker, illustrator, and website designer, from Noho to the MTV towers. Carlson has twice been a participant in the Frost Place poetry workshops. Co-founder with Deborah Atherton of the writing group, Riverwriters, she lives in Manhattan.)