Fairy Tale Review
The Violet Issue
Now in Print!

The Violet Issue
dedicated to the memory of beloved poet
Sarah Hannah (1966 – 2007)
contains new work by:

Kim Addonizio, Don Mee Choi, Lucy Corin, Tracy Daugherty, Espido Freire, Toshiya Kamei, Espido Freire, Sarah Hannah, Lily Hoang, Anna Maria Hong, Kim Hyesoon, Jeffrey Levine, Lisa Olstein, David Petruzelli, Natania Rosenfeld, Aurelie Sheehan, Richard Siken, Kieran Suckling, Lee Upton, Julie Marie Wade

Sarah Hannah
“Diana, Hunting Words”

Seems like she just keeps running through her woods,
Grasping: violet, bramble, thatch, stumped utterly.
Nouns, those faithful slender hounds, those

Tender lagomorphs, have turned
On her and flown, soft haunches gone to flexion,
Swifted deep into a burrow.

Is it some kind of infection, all this spit
And struggle? Her brow’s a furrow.
She parses grasses, lifts her arrow, points, can’t see.

Don’t ask her what she wants for lunch;
She’ll just start hunting turkey, gesticulating
Chicken salad, tuna fish, but no such utterances

Come; they’ve gotten stuck inside her brain—
A confusion of swells;
They dally just beyond her mighty grip,

Or flirt out there with all her nymphs—
All those things, those fucking things, you know!
Rabbit, rabbit; cigarette; taxi out of here;

Cigarette, damnit, nightgown, oncologist, Rabbi.
And that other noun, that pronouncement
Firm as cement, the blight too large to voice,

Waits silently, inscribed in numbers on a chart
Behind a silver board, and it pours suddenly,

Natania Rosenfeld
“The Minder”

My minder accompanies me everywhere I go, on errands of tedium and excursions of fun—especially on excursions of fun.

If I say, “This is beautiful,” she says, “No it’s not,” or else,”What do you mean, beautiful?  What sort of a word is that?”

If I say, “I love,” she says, “Love is a word for fools.”

I took a big knife to cut my minder off, but she only grew back, bigger than before, like a fungus lump on the trunk of a tree.

When she was a child, she stole my dolls.  “No more imaginary games,” she said, and gave me a shot that dulled my mind, so that I could not invent identities or set the dolls dancing.

If I look up into the trees, she is there, ruining the leaves, knocking down acorns.  Like a monkey, but not playful.

If I go swimming, she impedes the water and I start to gulp for air.

When I sing, she mocks my wavering soprano until I fall silent.

I need someone to help me murder her.  I decide to advertise for an accomplice, but subtly.  I must find a kindred spirit, who will understand the task without my stating it.  If I say it exactly, my minder will read the advertisement and know it is about her.

“Needed,” I write.  I chew my fingers. 

“Needed badly.”  No. 

“Needed: Spanish bayonet.”  I found this in the dictionary; it is the name of a plant.  “For cutting thickets.”  No, no.  A bayonet is a thing, not a person, even when disguised as a plant.  And a plant can’t cut other plants.  Or can it?

“Wanted: companion bayonet for toothy cutting.”  Better.

“. . . for combating pests.”  No.

“Wanted: companion bayonet, discerning scissors.  For climbing trees, for swimming, for duets.  For spoiling the sport of the spoilsports.”

The minder will know!  The trees, the swimming, the singing—she knows those are my favorite things.  Then again, there are others: so many occasions where she appears with her finger in my face, saying “Mind your manners,” saying, “Glutton!  Sloth!  Pleasure-seeker!”

When I find this other person, we will rip the minder out by the roots.  Like a mandrake, she’ll scream and bleed, and leave a gaping hole in my side.  But we’ll sew it up, and it will heal, and I’ll be free; and my friend and I will do a dance of victory.

*

I’ve had an answer to my advertisement!  We made an arrangement to meet in the park, at noon.  The minder hates noon; she shrinks into her tiny tent in the high part of the day.  We’ll meet by the fountain, and it will all go from there.

I’m nervous.  So many have failed me.  I frown, determined to present my worst face, sure this companion will fail me, too.

There she is!  She is looking and walking straight toward me.  Her face is luminous.  I can’t help it, I fall in love.  I was expecting a he, not a she; I was expecting disappointment, and beetle brows—the minder in another guise, one of her many human guises.  The savior who turns out to be a bloodsucker, a companion-in-arms to the minder, all hairy and blank-eyed.

“I won’t stay,” says the apparition, sitting down beside me.  The fountain sprays us with its soft pebbles.   “I know what you need me for.  When I’ve done my work, I must go.  I’m sorry,” she says, caressing my shoulder.

She removes a small spade from a bag at her side.  She lifts my shirt on the left.  My heart throbs, my skin shivers, I have never felt so exposed.  Are people watching?  No, all the others have disappeared, finished their lunches and gone back to their work in high offices.  We are alone in the park.

I think I will swoon when she touches my flesh with with the spade’s pointed tip.  “This will hurt,” she says.

But it doesn’t.  Only faintly, I can feel the spade digging deep, below my rib cage. 

It feels like music heard far away, or people’s voices when you lie feverish in your childhood bed.  I am looking in her eyes, and she is looking in mine.  Her eyes are green; fronds wave in their depths.  Yes, it hurts, but not badly.

Suddenly, I hear a screaming, I feel a flailing; I see a gnarled root, like a hunk of ginger.  I see the face of my minder, crumpling.  She hisses a last admonishment: “No love!  No lo---.”  But it is too late: she’s done for!

The beautiful companion turns from me to look at the park.  “We need a place to bury her,” she says.  “Do you want me to find it?”  The gnarled root has shrunk to the size of a thumb in her hand. 

“Let’s throw her in the fountain and make a wish!”  I reply, excited, triumphant.   

And I toss her over my shoulder, facing away from the water, not even looking.  I sing a  song, voicing all my wishes for the life ahead.  My companion sings with me: a duet, only she sings in another language, one I can’t understand.  My nerves understand it, though; beneath my skin, my nerves tingle with an unknown clarity.

When the song is over, my beautiful companion takes out needle and thread.   The thread is light pink, thick and soft.  I don’t feel the silver piercing, though I feel the thread move in and out like flesh of my flesh.  I look down; the stitches are invisible, the wound is already puckered.  My companion, without a word, has vanished.

In the water, a handful of dust rises to the surface and dissolves.

Richard Siken
“Transfer”

Objective truth, systematic thinking, and the scientific method. Lamps shining in a dark room. If you trust yourself, that is. I don’t see right, not always, blurry sometimes, the wrong colors. They die, these people, mostly they die, and the colors flash. Death is simply too much change at once. If you could take the stress, the trauma, and stretch it over space or time. If you could. I put my hands on the colors and send them somewhere, try not to be noticed, don’t know where it goes. There’s a blue in your heart and a green underneath it. There’s red on your forehead and pink at your neck. Let it move, move through you and leave no trace, the wind, be the tree and rustle, blur, make a noise and be finished with it. Brace yourself. Unbrace. Embrace.

            Go
            to sleep.
            You can sleep
            now.
            You can rest your
            head here.
            You can rest your head and
            close
            your eyes.
            You can close your eyes
            now.
            You can close your eyes and
            dream.
            Because I’m still
            right here.
            And I’m telling you
            a story
            about the worms.
            But
            I won’t let them
            get you.
            It’s a happy story.
            See,
            the worms never
            get you.
            They just keep on
            not
            getting you.
            Because of me.
            Because I’m not
            going anywhere.
            So you see the worms
            are at
            a complete
            disadvantage.