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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


B A R B A R A    H A M B Y

Achtung, My Princess, Good Night

Arrivederci, Cinderella, your goose is cooked, grilled,
burned to be precise, blistered, while you, nestled in your

crumbling necropolis of love, think, who am I?
Delores del Rio? No, nothing so déclassé, yet

even your mice have deserted you, little pipsqueaks,
fled to serve your stepsisters, dedicated now to

good works, a soup kitchen, if you can imagine. What is this
heresy of ugliness that has overtaken the world?

I am Beauty, you scream. Wrong fairy tale, and
just so you don't forget, size sixes are not enough in this

karaoke culture, and even here you have to do more than
lip sync "Begin the Beguine," "My Funny Valentine,"

"Mona Lisa," "Satisfaction," because you can't get no,
no, no, no, consummation, so to speak. Sex is kaput,

over, married a decade, three litters of neurasthenic
princes, your figure shot, not to mention your vagina. Don't

quote me on that you cry, my public can't bear very much
reality. Who can? Yet there it is staring you in the face.

Scram, vamoose, la cucaracha, cha cha cha. Admit it, you're
tired of this creepy pedestal, the pressed pleats,

undercooked chicken, Prince Embonpoint and his cheesy
Virna Lisi look-alike mistress with her torpedo chest. Auf

Wiedersehen to this stinking fairy-tale life, this pack-rat
Xanadu built on the decomposing carcasses of girlish hope.

Yes, all your best friends, all your gorgeous diamonds are cubic
zirconias, but flashing like the real thing, as if you'd know.


"Achtung, My Princess, Good Night" from The Alphabet of Desire (New York University Press, 1999), © 1999 by Barbara Hamby. Reprinted by permission of the author.
It is a violation of copyright law to distribute or reproduce this poem without express permission of the author.