Fairy Tale - Poem

Literary Review, Wntr, 2004 by Cathleen Calbert

   Everyone knows
   who the witch is.

   We've seen her
   dropping her kids off at daycare.

   She's the anesthesiologist
   who hires a British au pair.

   She's the teacher
   who gave you a D.

   She's the woman
   who isn't smiling.

   A lovely young thing
   into cigarettes and barbiturates
   failed at suburban housewifery.
   Her children ran off
   with their grandmother.
   Her husband swam in his own pool of gin.
   Their cottage creaked open
   like a Cape Cod beach shack.
   It moaned, "Love me, love me,"
   on summer mornings.
   In the winter, it stayed in a trance.

   The witch is mad.
   She's fruit-loops.
   She's ding-dong nuts.
   Besides, she's not the brightest bulb
   in our poetic chandelier.
   She can't remember anything.
   She's been alone too long
   in her red nightie.

   In the old days,
   she bedded the milkman,
   the mailman, the guy from ups.
   Witches drive men crazy.
   Then witches drive men crazy.
   "Love me, love me,"
   on summer mornings.
   In the winter, a trance.
   She's grown lonely as a flasher,
   as a sheep rancher,
   as an underpaid parlor maid.
   She has been dreaming
   of the flashy disappearances
   of sister-witches,
   how they clawed their way
   to that moon.
   She types out her own death warrant:

   A boy and a girl,
   brother and sister,
   two pumpkin seeds,
   jog into the forest
   with seven finger-puppets,
   a bottle of their father's homebrew,
   and a number of questions.
   Little Ingrid and Petrovich
   punch each other's stomachs
   with the puppets sewn
   by their put-upon stepmother.
   They throw their golden bottle
   through the witch's window
   though no glass shatters.
   There is no glass.
   The damn bottle lands in her lap.
   Petrovich pokes his head in.
   Mr. Inquisitor.

   The witch is lean
   as an ex-model,
   her smoky growl theatrical.
   She takes him into her starving arms
   and calls him Little Richard,
   sweet gherkin,
   my final folly.
   She diddles his pizzle
   and asks him to rock away
   on top of her,
   a boat lost at sea.
   He does what he's told.
   He's a good boy.
   He plants his seed.
   Yet her uterus is blessed with emptiness.
   There's no way around this.
   She's in her forties.
   She writes fourteen poems for him
   when he leaves her
   to sleep off the beer buzz.

   The witch tongues another Valium,
   ocean eyes on the moon.
   "I'm a circus freak," she says.
   "God's little Jesus."
   "Love me, love me,"
   Ingrid pipes up,
   taking her turn.
   "Love me, love, me,"
   the witch moans into her cold soup.
   Ingrid nestles into her neck
   until the witch cuddles the girl,
   feeling the matching fingertips,
   mother-of-pearl rosary,
   and ruby nipples,
   then finds the peach-divide
   of her daughter's body,
   and eats the child out
   of the woman,
   her rival,
   her devotee,
   her replacement.

Cathleen Calbert is the author of two books of poetry: Lessons in Space and Bad Judgment. Her work has appeared in a number of publications, including The Best American Poetry 1995, Ms., The New Republic, and Poetry. She has been awarded The Discovery Award from The Nation, The Gordon Barber Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, and a Pushcart Prize. New work is forthcoming in The Southern Review and The Women's Review of Books. Currently, she is a Professor of English at Rhode Island College.