Dogmatics

In folktale, it goes like this: The sisters leave home    to bring back the dead coal miner. At the doorway to hell,each girl gives up something for his release: a forearm,    a right ear, her very cleanest kidney.Or it starts with the shoe salesman from Poughkeepsie    who keeps saying to his wife, I could just eat you up.Eventually, he does.    For a long time Bethany was wanting a Joan Didion        tattoo—we tell ourselves stories in order to live—scrolled up the back of her right tricep at the same time I was wantinga lantern on my calf. Our paths luminous.    And when a boy I brought home met my father,my father would say,“Do you consider America to be a God-fearing country?”        and once I misheard,thought he said girl not God.            What I want is—I want to be sharp.    Not a bride but like a bride.          At first, it was just the storyof a good girl with a basket.    She was preparing for what could have been a very long day.Then, the grandmother or the wolf        or the wolf in the grandmother’s body    started that little dance, asking Aren’t you sucha pretty young thing?