Cinderella Sends Her Godmother Away
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Cinderella Sends Her Godmother Away
I will never leave this house.
How I hated the company of women and called my sisters wicked when they tied down my restless hands with work, when they licked me with their curses.
But, Keeper, all names are curses.
You know how my body arches for the faithful, brutal touch of almost family. How the skin hollers to be rubbed quiet with hurting.
Don’t send your chariot.
Let me slip back into muddy dark. Let midnight expose a dirt-born, squared-toed monster from which all pure hands shrink back. [End Page 1000]
Natalie Graham, a Cave Canem Fellow, received the MFA in creative writing from the University of Florida. Currently she is a University Distinguished Fellow in the American studies doctoral program at Michigan State University. She is also completing her first volume of poems, The Perfect Body. She has published poems in Valley Voices: A Literary Review and New England Review.
