Snow White and the Seven Satellites

126 Shelley Puhak Snow White and the Seven Satellites  A star needs a satellite like a fish needs a bicycle. Imagine seven bicycles. Imagine so many spoked mouths gaping in the garage, so many chains rusted so many shades almost-orange, of not-quite-brown. Say it: yellow. Then imagine my dwarves again—demoted Pluto and his minions, bobbing in the cool slake of the dark ocean of space. ‘ Everybody wants a piece of me. Mr. Disney insists on my heart in a box. The Brothers Grimm want my lungs and liver boiled in salt. The Italians want my intestines. The Spanish want my blood in a bottle stoppered with one severed toe. And Pushkin, he binds me—to a tree. For the wolves. For seven knights, mustached and ruddy. 127 ‘ Back to the seven bicycles, rusting. My astronomers never bother to look in the garage. And if they did!— in all that rust, iron. And in iron, shards of space rocks, from errant dwarves involved in stellar smash-ups. And in every story, bits of pyrite— left to oxidize— fools gold, iron sulfite. ...