After Little Red Riding Hood

Firs as green as guts
of emeralds dipped in oceans
scratch my cheeks. Bark
and pitch beneath my shoes
a crunching susurrus.

And paths are meant
to be strayed from—isn’t
that how we get new paths?
Wasn’t this planet pathless
once? Wasn’t it all choose your own?  

There is something
breathing here, an old thing,
something ancient. Fur as gray
as silver caught in moonlight
strokes my hair.

Forest panting
on my throat. I shed my gloves,
my stockings. Wander in
the clearing, touching
sap and pinecone teeth.

I let my basket trail
off, confections littering
woods, pink glint. Press
my palms into the tilth.
Feel my eyes go gold.

Catherine Kyle

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Catherine Kyle is the author of Shelter in Place (Spuyten Duyvil, 2019) along with six shorter collections, most recently Coronations (Ghost City Press, 2019). Her writing has appeared in Midwestern Gothic, Mid-American Review, Bombay Gin, and other journals, and has been honored by the Idaho Commission on the Arts, the Alexa Rose Foundation, and other organizations. She works as an assistant professor of English at the College of Western Idaho. Her website is www.catherinebaileykyle.com. 

30 Sep This entry was published on September 30, 2019 at 12:02 am and is filed under 38 (September 2019), Archive, Poetry. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.