Fear, by Nicole Nicholson
Occluded forest, the hood over my head:
green fingers folding together,
brown bark teeth in a damp musky mouth,
Bavaria’s finest. With your pen, you
cover me in red, and call me virgin:
color me blood, and call me bruise.
Fresh incense of needles dying below my feet,
snap and crackle green, evergreens casting
a princess’ path for me upon the forest floor. I walk
a virgin sacrifice from path to path: the script’s
already been written for me. I follow it
letter by letter, curve by curve: somewhere,
the sentence will end where veins intersect at the
junction underneath my breast, the tunneled mountain mound
where my heart is buried alive. The wolf
seeks to resurrect the living from the dead.
As I walk, I watch
half-moon teeth marks quiver below my surfaces
like little leviathians, backs arced and ready
to dull their hunger. This is first blood
begging for rapture before it ruptures. I am
only missing Quetzalcoatl’s feathers for this walk,
given a red riding hood instead: a replica
of the door and crest between my thighs. And
I know how this tale ends. The basket
is just a prop; so is Grandmother. The god is
wolf and serpent chasing each other,
trading pyramid for forest. Blood calls
for more blood: but you insert the woodsman
to wipe the blood off your own hands. Shall you
split open a thirsty god and deliver me? This
tale is older than you, curled up inside the code that built you,
little scaled and feathered lexicons that hiss inside your ear
and tell you how the story goes:
virgins walk the woods and come back blood. It has
always been this way.
Written 7/30/10 and 8/3/10
© 2010 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.
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This poem was written for We Write Poems Prompt #13: Little Red Riding Hood Revisited. Irene Toh invited us to revisit the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale.
I am back into the land of the living, as you can see. I decided to take a darker approach to the Little Red Riding Hood tale, also drawing the picture over the weekend. I hope you enjoyed both the poem and the illustration.
-Nicole
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Stumble It!
This poem is as dense as the forest you wrote about and dark as night. I loved the last two lines..how true.
This
tale is older than you, curled up inside the code that built you,
Nicole, I like your thematic retelling imbued with blood, virgins and god!
Rich, dark and mysterious; part of that tangled web we can find ourselves in. And Mary is right about those last two lines!
Dark, dense, delicious. Age old. Funny, my mind never made the virgin connection. It works beautifully in this piece. Your take on the prompt is tasty. Love it!
~Brenda
As always Nicole you did a splendid job!
This piece is dark and put together so well!
Pamela
glad you’re back, Nicole.
such a powerful piece — so much misogyny in those old tales. I love how you focused on the authors, love how you point out to the they didn’t invent the tale — only twisted it.
(and I am memorized by your drawing — fantastic!!)
“This tale is older than you”… Indeed it is! Lesson learned! Well written, Nicole.
I liked dthis Nicole….nicely done and thanks for sharing your words
Wonderfully poem!
wolfish grins
[...] poems are, but instead illustrate my words (a good example is “Fear” which appears with my poem “Tears and Teeth”). I’ve taken up drawing again – something I’ve not done since high school – and my interest [...]