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42 the minnesota review Sarah Cotterill Gretel 1 Famished, we sampled the hag's window, and now we pay: cleaver, cauldron; the crutchstumping in the hut sounds eager for brewed orphan. Blue smoke shoots from the flue. 2 What is there to go back to? His puny grief, her lunatic envy— acerbic, stooped at the loom — and hunger. Our parents knock on God's hovel. And here, the weak-eyed witch, stroking the chicken bone: "My dear, you will have a succulent brother." But blood is blood. I've always wondered if I'd push someone into the oven. 3 Hansel, a dream keeps returning— sometimes it is father and mother grown indistinguishable from the beeches perilous over the house, hollow with heartrot; sometimes it is the hag, branching. And there is another, in which I walk as if peacefully in the forest, gathering pine for your burning. And I wake to a room pungent with wood smoke and the resin will not rinse from my hands. cotterill 43 Sarah Cotterill Leaving Wisconsin for New York in the Sixth Month 1 Your eyes close in prairie, under the eclipse. Your eyes open in woodland, under auroras. These are the months of completion: your face, hands compose themselves; your heart, your sex become complicate. What do you hear? sighing of breath in the veined branchia of my body, creak of trees in a record winter, and placental confidences, murmurings of the blood; our good and bad faith, muffled, our loves. I listen for the new pulse, and hear my own, subtly changed as if there were a shifting of intricate chambers. 2 Arms waving in the dark of another body saying goodbye or madly hello hello— as if lonely. Eyelids brushing the chorion, veil of your first wedding. Mouth tasting the waters of beginning. Feet clambering, weightless, the slippery dome under the navel. Lately, you hardly know what to do with your hands and knock continually, poltergeist of my true home — wanting to leave. 44 the minnesota review Why are you hurrying? You are without lovers, without possessions. No one is following you, and you are not guilty of anything. ...

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