February 2024
Bio Note: hese poems are from my chapbook Our Wolves, published by Alien Buddha Press, which seeks to reinvent the Red Riding Hood story and its main characters. This collection was a Best Books Awards 2023 finalist. I live in Phoenix along a wash that attracts wild animals, including bobcats, javelina, and hawks--but no wolves.
You All Been Waiting for a Wolf Confession
Am I right? Doesn’t everybody love the instant when the bad guy on Perry Mason, sitting in the witness box next to the judge, suddenly rage-twists his face and screams, “I did it, I did it, and I’m not sorry!” Well, I didn’t. I didn’t kill anybody. Not that crabby gran or her fever-cheeked little grandkid. You might say I have a stake in this family, too. I can’t admit to what I didn’t do. Even if I . . . never mind. It was the hunter was after the girl. I’d been looking over that little one for years. Before she could walk, I spooned squash and strained peas into that rosebud. Clamped pins in my mouth while I diapered her. When I taught her to swim she clutched at my fur until she got the hang of floating. I didn’t let go of her new bike until she could sail down the sidewalk on her own. I kept my lips smoothed down over my teeth most of the time. She wasn’t always good, and to prepare her for the future I sometimes showed her them, all yellow and snaggled. So when she first put on that sexy red and sashayed on down the path, I acted crazy so her mama would warn her. That woman is such a narcissist, did she do it? And did the girl listen to her if she did? Because I knew I was the only one I could count on, I followed her to granny’s, hiding behind garbage cans and cars along the way. That’s when I saw him and the way he long-looked at her, while sharpening his knife on the thick leather strap of his kill bag. I took the precautions of locking granny in her closet and when the girl got there, put her in with the old lady, then waited for the hunter to show up with his knife and leering face. But it didn’t go well for me. The hunter is an experienced killer, and he slashed me into squirrel pelts. He lied with all the candy in his pockets but while the girl told her truth, the law agreed that the hunter rescued the women from my innards, setting back feminism a few more centuries when really that girl was prepared, what with the swimming and biking and dealing with me all those years.
Originally published in Book of Matches
I’m a Woodcutter, Dammit*
Remember that hunters don’t carry axes. Guns, yes. Sometimes bows and arrows. But this here’s a Husky multi-utility axe. You heard wrong about me, your language weighed down by umlauts and jenga words. Backpfeifengesicht, no offense. Repeat after me in English: woodcutter, one who cuts wood, that’s me. By my efforts, you’ve got timber for your shelters and fuel for your stoves. So. I’m resting on a stump, pouring from my coffee thermos, when I witness what went down that moonlit night. She might have been small with narrow wrists and ringlets, but, man! Her bellow bounced off the stars and into the moon. She kicked him right in the tender spot. I knew how he would react to that, but remember, I am the one with the axe. The end of the story is all up to me. Did I dash after them, a chicken after the knife has its way, rushing to save her? Or did I sit here nibbling a Danish, sipping the Black Label coffee, and clipping my nails? If so, that’s the end of girl and old woman. The mother didn’t warn her & let her travel after dark on her own. Gulp. Gulp. The end. The end. Keep in mind that I’m not a natural hero. Remember that I’m just a woodcutter. When the wolf came back to the forest, he wanted to work off some calories and offered to chop some trees while I took a nap in the echoing silence.*In some of the French “Little Red” versions there is a woodcutter, but in the original Charles Perrault tale, there is no rescue at all. In the Grimm Brothers’ version the rescuer is a hunter.
Originally published in Book of Matches
How to Make a Hand Shadow Wolf
Start in your own room. Shut the door. If you can, lock it or else barricade with the hope chest and all your dolls. Prop a flashlight on the bedding, pointed at the gray fan-pattern plaster, and make a light-circle on the wall. Find your shadow. Try to keep track. Close four fingers with the thumb up. Curl in your index finger. There, your own shadow is a basic wolf. Add a thumb and wiggle the ears. Watch now. Your pinky finger is the mouth, open and close it. See, no teeth. Can you make an open eye by tweaking that one finger? Close it now. You’re in charge. Tip your hand, open the mouth, and howl at the moon, all aquiver.
Originally published in Sheila-Na-Gig
©2024 Luanne Castle
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