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Witch To Rapunzel's Mother
Girl, you remember: your sticky fingers
had to have me. You were like a pearl
boiling and boiling in bedsheets,
bedsick, sending your husband to my garden�
you couldn't live without the vines
I snapped and pruned�my Lamb's Tongue
and Lobelia. My Lady Bleeding and Lustwort.
I caught that boy's hands at the roots
and he sold you out for Sage.
Yours wasn't the first first-born I fleeced.
I'm a daughter-stealer,
the one you pray to
when your life is dishware and laundry.
Your daughter is fine.
I planted her among Winter Crookneck
and Kale. I'll keep her well.
You? You can't have everything
because everything has a price. Mind
your rows of wet towels on the line,
dust lace under the bed.
Mind your husband�
that suited bag of rice.
Coney Island, 1879
The skin of the elephant and its trainer were not entirely
different: paper stitched with sharp threads;
wrinkled, metal gray.
The trainer tied the elephant to the wired floor
with what can't be named regret�
it was a feeling less na�ve than that.
Then Edison, in a misbuttoned black vest,
accustomed now to crowds gathering for his inventions�
When first he lit the low-glow lights
people prayed�
directed voltage up those thick-trunk legs;
first, the front knees bent in mantis position,
then the wide ears fell forward
like a Chinese paper fan
opening to reveal a painting.
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