Apologue

Para saber y contra y contra para aprender . . .

To know in order to tell and to tell in order to know,
Little Song of a Strange Bird, this is the story as I know it.
Inside each tree you open, a room. Inside each room,
a white bed. But who can sleep with lies chattering
in the drapes like trapped birds? You have the eyes
of a cat and claws beneath your opera gloves. Little Blood
Cordial, do you know what you are? Too many times
you’ve tried to pass as a cup of honey. You drink wine
from a hollowed horse hoof. Little Kettle of Lye among
Cakes of Soap, the spell’s supposed to fill your cupboards
with clove-studded oranges and apples, always apples.
If I were you, I wouldn’t eat them; poison has a way
of finding its maker. Little Whisker on a Witch’s Chin,
I don’t know what’s underneath your bearskin cape,
your goat-hair wig. The look in your eyes isn’t human.
But it’s not too late. Even a fox with blood on its muzzle
can wish on red clover and be a girl again. Little Curio
Lined with the Hearts of Men, the story isn’t over. Listen,
the drapes are singing. Open the window, that the lies may fly out.

Maggie Smith is the author of Lamp of the Body (Red Hen Press, 2005 and Nesting Dolls (Pudding House, 2005). Her poems recently appeared or are forthcoming in Blackbird, Brooklyn Review, Court Green,Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, the Massachusetts Review, Mid-American Review, Quarterly West, Third Coast, and elsewhere. In 2003–04, she was the Emerging Writer/Lecturer at Gettysburg College.

“Apologue” appears in our Winter 2007 issue.