Poetr y - $8.00

m o n k e y p u z z l e p r e s s . c o m

The FairyTales

MammalsTell

El isabethSharp

McKetta

The FairyTales

MammalsTell

El isabethSharp

McKetta

The Fairy Tales Mammals Tell targets the art and necessity of the fairy tale by exploring, with language, its vital energy. With undertones of love and loss, myth and inescapable reality, this poetry collection offers a visceral experience on every page – truly the fairy tales we need to tell.

“Elisabeth McKetta taps fairy tales and, presto, they transform themselves into living things that reach out and tug at us, reminding us of the exqui-site fragility in ‘once upon a time.’ Hers is a Proustian adventure that rein-vents the fairy tale for us, infusing it with the drama of times past.”

Maria Tatar, author of The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales

“In this excellent collection, Elisabeth McKetta grapples with the bedrock basics of being human - or perhaps more accurately, as she puts it, of being ‘unsteadily human.’ All of the imperatives of flesh - love, lust, the making and breaking of hearts, marriage, children, and all the rest - get full play in these wise, unflinching poems.”

Ben Fountain, author of Brief Encounters with Che Guevara and Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk

9 7 8 0 9 8 8 6 0 7 7 1 2

ISBN-13 9780988607712ISBN-10 098860771-9

50800

TheFairyTales

MammalsTell

ElisabethSharp

McKetta

Monkey Puzzle PressHarrison, Arkansas

TheFairyTales

MammalsTell

Copyright © 2013 Elisabeth Sharp McKetta

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written per-mission except in the case of brief excerpts. Printed in the United States of America.

M o n k e y P u z z l e P r e s s424 N. Spring St.

Harrison, Arkansas 72601monkeypuzzlepress.com

ISBN-10: 0-9886077-1-9 ISBN-13: 978-0-9886077-1-2

Cover & Interior DesignNate Jordon

Cover ArtWilhelm von Kaulbach

courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

For James & Snowden

Table of Contents

Metronome 1 Tryst 2Seeded 3A Child Asked Me 5Why the Children Followed 6 Milk Traps 7 Mammalian 8 An Occasional Elegy for Milk 9When a Sister Loses a Sister 10Mary 12Alternative 13The Breaking Point 14The Frog King 17Rapunzel 18Raspberries 20Peeling 21Healing Waters 22Borrowing a Daughter to Read to Sleep 23That Blade 24The Real Labor 25 Watching My Grandmother Empty Her Files 27Water-children 28 Fairy Tales Mammals Tell 29

Acknowledgements 30

Thanks 31

Metronome

She has eaten. It’s not that. But panic

woke her and nowshe needs me

to breathe her

back to sleep. I put my face near hers. Deep in,

deep out.

Intertidal.

Her mouth pulses like a squid. She is learning.

We are beached on our sides, bare-bellied,

her tidal mouth muscles working her thumb.

I close my eyes so she will close hers. So she will mirror me

into the dark coves of sleep. Oceaning together, she and I.

At last

we are both

Quiet.

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The Fairy Tales Mammals Tell

Tryst

Only once did we make love on an atlas, and it was on top of Alaska. Afterward we admired the geography, the spooling hills and land-wrinkles, sudden lakes and changing shades of green. We never made it there to visit, but in an afternoon we demolished Anchorage, sent canyons through the Endicott Mountains, tore a hole in the Bering Sea.

2

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta

Seeded

At a certain point of night, the city is sepia and children glow green in the dark. Summer

ends tomorrow. Locusts have left their skins. Rush-hour sings quietly on M Street.

We can hear everything from where we sit on the front steps. We toast it as it goes by.

But we each are saving one last sip of wine.Not on purpose, but because

we are waiting for something—not night, not autumn, not for our one-day

husbands to pass by and leave us seeded and ready to burst.

We are waiting for this fetal night to form in its grapeskin, leaving us one perfect

image – this half-darkness, this being hereand being young – we must keep it safe

because we will need it one day, after our skin has crumpled and the wine is all gone.

One night we three will swell like grapes and burst. Out will come children. But that night is not yet. These boys

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The Fairy Tales Mammals Tell

we love now will vanish like dew on grass. So toast them now, women,

you tomorrow-mothers, you one-day-widows. None of us know yet to whomwe are drinking our last glasses of wine, but we all hold our breath and hope that it will be good.

4

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta

A Child Asked Me:What is the Center of the Universe?

The bed. Oh, the bed. What doesn’t happen in the bed? It could be the kitchen counter, or the prayer bench someone left in your yard. The prayer bench fits two bodies, precariously.

What about the desk, the area rug, the nursing chair? They all have purposes too. You can lay a baby on its back on the bookshelf, wedge it between Shakespeare and How to Cook Everything.

But the bed again, the bed.

In older days families slept together, read in separate rooms. The story goes that they hadn’t yet learned to read silently. The same story goes that they all caught lice. So stories go.

The bed is the origin of all things, the beginning of life and the end. The bed, the messy bed, the spilled upon bed, always the unmade bed.

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The Fairy Tales Mammals Tell

About the Author

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta has been an essayist, a small press editor, a college professor, a poet, a big sister, a dog-owner, a Texan, an Idahoan, and most recently, a mother. She earned a PhD in literature, writing about the intersections of fairy tales and autobiography. Her work has been published widely and she teaches writing classes in Boise and at Harvard.

www.elisabethsharpmcketta.com

A Slow Curve digs at, and quivers with, the sentence and its potentiality. Traveling cross-country and into the na-ked words of close and honest relationships, Henning’s language opens our eyes to what we always see but never perceive.

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A rare look inside the complexities of the writer’s co-coon. This, and birth. A raw and intentional exploration of language, space and communication. Min Jung Oh has set a new standard for innovative poetry.

Poetry / $8.00Chapbook: 38 pagesPublished: September 2012ISBN-10: 0-9851705-8-5

“Flecks of dust and wine and words.”

Lost in a landscape of numbers, businessmen, and the shadows of unrequited love, a young woman finds her-self in the desert.

Poetry / $8.00Chapbook: 30 pagesPublished: May 2012ISBN-10: 0-9851705-4-9

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Monkey Puzzle Press

Poetr y - $8.00

m o n k e y p u z z l e p r e s s . c o m

The FairyTales

MammalsTell

El isabethSharp

McKetta

The FairyTales

MammalsTell

El isabethSharp

McKetta

The Fairy Tales Mammals Tell targets the art and necessity of the fairy tale by exploring, with language, its vital energy. With undertones of love and loss, myth and inescapable reality, this poetry collection offers a visceral experience on every page – truly the fairy tales we need to tell.

“Elisabeth McKetta taps fairy tales and, presto, they transform themselves into living things that reach out and tug at us, reminding us of the exqui-site fragility in ‘once upon a time.’ Hers is a Proustian adventure that rein-vents the fairy tale for us, infusing it with the drama of times past.”

Maria Tatar, author of The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales

“In this excellent collection, Elisabeth McKetta grapples with the bedrock basics of being human - or perhaps more accurately, as she puts it, of being ‘unsteadily human.’ All of the imperatives of flesh - love, lust, the making and breaking of hearts, marriage, children, and all the rest - get full play in these wise, unflinching poems.”

Ben Fountain, author of Brief Encounters with Che Guevara and Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk

9 7 8 0 9 8 8 6 0 7 7 1 2

ISBN-13 9780988607712ISBN-10 098860771-9

50800