The Wolf039s Postcript To 039little Red Riding Hood039 – The Poetry Monster

by Agha Shahid Ali

First, grant me my sense of history:

I did it for posterity,

for kindergarten teachers

and a clear moral:

Little girls shouldn’t wander off

in search of strange flowers,

and they mustn’t speak to strangers.

And then grant me my generous sense of plot:

Couldn’t I have gobbled her up

right there in the jungle?

Why did I ask her where her grandma lived?

As if I, a forest-dweller,

didn’t know of the cottage

under the three oak trees

and the old woman lived there

all alone?

As if I couldn’t have swallowed her years before?

And you may call me the Big Bad Wolf,

now my only reputation.

But I was no child-molester

though you’ll agree she was pretty.

And the huntsman:

Was I sleeping while he snipped

my thick black fur

and filled me with garbage and stones?

I ran with that weight and fell down,

simply so children could laugh

at the noise of the stones

cutting through my belly,

at the garbage spilling out

with a perfect sense of timing,

just when the tale

should have come to an end.

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A Walk Through the Yellow Pages

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Copyright ©:

1987, SUN-Gemini Press

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the-infernal-regions.html by Aaron Baker
honeycomb.html by Aaron Baker
Dark Matter by Aaron Baker by Aaron Baker
polyphony_in_a_cathedral.html by Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
one_almost_might.html by Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
nursery_rhyme_for_a_twenty_first_birthday.html by Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
Not Love Perhaps by Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
night_piece.html by Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
never.html by Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
music.html by Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
meeting.html by Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
last_word_to_childhood.html by Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
june_sick_room.html by Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
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flight_of_stairs.html by Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
epitaph_on_a_disturber_of_his_times.html by Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
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