Word Garden Word List--Classic Fairy Tales

 

Hello my darlings! Having come through a deep dark wood filled with wonders and dangers, here you are, ready for this week's Word List! Waving my wand in a circle thrice, a bright spark and a puff of colored smoke appear, and then we see this week's source material, Iona & Peter Opie's collection The Classic Fairy Tales. 

"We all loved it!" --the Three Bears

"Made my hair stand on end!" --Rapunzel

"We love animal stories! --Three Billy Goats Gruff

So many ringing endorsements, and from such dear acquaintances whom we've known since forever! What could be better?

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new original poem of our own. Then just link up, visit others, and move in to your spanking new (and quite delicious) gingerbread house! Your poem need have nothing to do with fairy tales unless you would like it to. So conjure up your fairy godmother and get writing! This prompt is active through Sunday. 

Your list:

accident

asleep

blood

calf

cat

ceremony

chamber

charming

darts

frog

kitchen

opposite

pearls

pudding

queen

sorry

transform

twice

uneasy

wolf

In Bohemia

 

In Bohemia, where the Moldau

flows and hollyhocks rise beside the cottages,

I went, as a child, into the dark woods to escape 

the terrors of the monster behind the door of mine.

At night in Bohemia, where the wolves

go and the moon rises over the trees beyond the cottages,

I rose with it in the night to escape nightmares

as the wolves sang to me like imaginary mothers.

In Bohemia there are hands, and cookies shaped like hands

full of sugar and poison. In the mornings the monster

fed me hate because I was a mirror, but the wolves

told me I was a lake and a home for the wandering moon.

In Bohemia, there are little girls carrying wicker baskets

beside the shores of the Moldau, where the rooks rise.

The rooks are born from ice in the blood of monsters

and they say, "we are the rooks, we love you," as they peck.

In Bohemia, by the shores of the Moldau, many children

disappear, into forests, or ovens, where monsters sent them.

The wolves heard of this and began to follow ceaselessly,

so closely that I became them, and they became me.

In Bohemia, where the Moldau 

flows and hollyhocks rise beside the cottages,

a Gypsy girl and her wolves shrank a monster

who starved on its own poison cookies.

So I ask you now, Sir or Madame come down the lane,

to my fairy cottage by a lake beneath a golden moon,

looking for love and loaves and a soft situation,

do you really want to fuck with me and my wolves?

Better you should go, and take your monsters with you.

_________

for The Sunday Muse #189, where I am hosting. 

The Becoming

If I become, in age, querulous,
hands worn to nubs from wringing them,
full of good advice no one wants,

please shoot me in the head, or

give me a gravy bath and leave me
in Wolf Country 

so that I may once again experience emotions beyond cheap fretting 
and vague upset.

Faced with a circling pack,
my concern over a sweater pilling
or
the neighbor's cat shitting in the azaleas 
will seem quaint and stupid.

I will rise up,
screaming come you motherfuckers, come
and I will be seen and considered
for the first time in years.
______

for Sunday Muse #96.

Emmeline By Wolf Light

Emmeline by wolf light
keeps Christmas in her own way--
mostly by night,
not much by day.

Emmeline in the evergreens
keeps a cookie called the Moon
in her pocket with her lighter
lit-burned sweet and brighter so it seems.

Emmeline in snow-skin
by witch light scratching at the door
to be let be, and be let in
to give you wolf light, nothing more.
______

mini for the mini-challenge.

sort of a companion piece to "Emmeline By Evening." 

Guadalupe

Guadalupe wears her red cape in the rain;
her black hair makes her appear to be on fire.
The sky is like an ether cloth, trying to put her out.
The sun is a coward, a pendejo, 
a grandee in Granada, a gardener in New Braunfels,
haunting the hotel from inside the linen closets.

Lupe goes to Danny's, but always drops her coffee mug.
It's a starry constellation on the floor.
"Ay, chica, you're such a spaz," say her friends.
Inside her is a howl. It paces from rib to rib, getting closer to her throat.
She has noticed that she no longer has hands.
Short gray fur, pads, the urge to run--
she has these at the end of her arms, her rope, her patience.

Last night, she dreamed that a gaucho rolled the moon across a stage
as if it were a lariat.
His horse snorted and stamped at the ground at the mere scent of her,
and then,
in the weird way of dreams,
the gaucho became Caligula, and he spoke to her urgently.
"I ordered my legions to march against the sea.
When they failed, I required that my soldiers collect shells in their helmets,
like little girls.
In the end, I turned into a porcupine, killed with quills delivered by my enemies."

Guadalupe's friends are blathering on about lip gloss.
Lupe sees that the Succubus and the Queen of the Vampires are sitting on one side of the door,
and that Chloe and God are sitting on the other,
like Nixons in a bowling alley.
Lupe winks at Savanna the teenage runaway,
and just like that, they are over the tables and out the door,
converting the split,
a silver blur in new moonlight, running hell for Sunday into indigo night.
________

for Marian's music prompt. Will the wolf survive? One of my favorite songs. 

When visiting New Braunfels, Texas, try the Prince Solms Inn. It is haunted by the spirit of a jilted bride.

Nixons.

See? 

  

In The Spring

Wolves came.
They did not come to see the flower garden.
Winter's last squall blew at their heels.
They had black faces,
and eyes as yellow as an elk bone.

I was writing a poem--
this poem,
for you,
but wolves came
and I curled myself around the April moon.

I'm sorry if you've come
and not found me here.
I'm sorry there is nothing left but a little blood-
my blood--
on the page,

but if the moon rises,
we'll talk, just as if summer was our favorite season after all;
and should the wolves come for you,
we can still be together, though it won't be the same,
in the fall.
________

The Lovely Bride

She made a lovely bride.
Wearing her white dress, she looked like a sexy cloud.

Her happy groom had their days planned out ahead of them,
As numerous and alike as the whiskers on his cheeks when he smiled.

Later, no one would admit to having invited the wolf--
To having brought the wolf;
Perhaps he brought himself, from deep in the forest's secret heart.

Up the aisle he came,
Right in the middle of the ceremony.
No one had a gun,
(it wasn't that kind of wedding)
And so no one knew a way to stop him.
He helped himself to a big fat bite of organdy and lace--
As if confusing the bride
With the wedding cake--
And half-dragged, half-carried her off to his sylvan hideaway.

Well.
Pandemonium!

Maybe her perfume attracted him.
Maybe she knew him before.
Maybe she knew him still!
She had only been standing there, trying to get married,
But the woman always gets the blame, yes?

The groom wept, then shouted,
"What do they want?"

Here is what we want:
In the morning, the bride crawled out of the wolf's den,
Her dress in shreds and tatters, bloody,
With scratches all over her skin and leaves in her hair,
Stinking to high heaven of wolf.
"Wow!" said the bride.

In a few years,
She will divorce the wolf
When he forgets her birthday again--
When he forgets to bathe or use cutlery--
When he drags home another big dead-ass elk, expecting her to turn it into pot roast.

But it will be all right.
There will be no kids.
In time, she will find somebody different--
More human, maybe.
More verbal.
Maybe even female!
Who really knows? But when that day comes,
One thing won't have changed at all--

She will make a lovely bride.
_______

for dverse open link #36