Table of Contents

  Introduction
  1. Mapping the Ways
  2. Spinning the Tales
  3. Voices & Viewpoints
  4. Spell Binding & Spell Breaking
  5. Magical Objects
  6. Desire & Its Discontents
  7. The Grimm Sisterhood
  8. Variations & Updates
  9. Ever After, Or a Few Years Later
  10. Living the Tales
  About the Authors
  Acknowledgments
  Selected Bibliography
  Index of Poems by Tale
  Index of Authors and Titles
  About the Editors

D A V I D    T R I N I D A D

Rapunzel
          For Sharon Smith

Like hair, the days and nights are growing longer
      and longer.
Nothing interests me. The landscape's flat: paths and
      dry fields,
villages, the same tiered orchard. My thick tresses
      twist, spread
down, surround me like the moat at the foot of this
      tower
in which I wait and waste my thoughts. The stone keeps
      cold, corners
dark; cobwebs as abandoned as the lace above my
      breasts.

Flies multiply on split fruit-skins in a wooden bowl
      next
to the barred window. Dust layers stream in. The sun
      lowers.

And each evening, the crone comes. Her crackled fingers
      appear
pinching the key. She brings round loaves of stale bread
      and water.
Carefully, she clasps my throat, lifts my face in front
      of her
like a hand-mirror, moans, weeps. If only once she'd say:
      "Here,
take this pair of scissors and cut your hair before it
      twists
into spaces between the bricks like vines." I'd slit my
      wrists.