With Rapunzel
by Hannah Calkin
I am hidden Back between
The mountain next to the stillest river
And the one so high it has conversations
With the clouds Sometimes the pines
Anger the stomach of the hanging wisps
And it rains on the tower roof In this cylinder
I have my favorite pie recipe Cherry and spun cream
My favorite brush It loses seven bristles
Every moon cycle And my softest apron
With my name embroidered in red The stitching
Spaced a fingernail apart Missing the first two letters
Punzel Punzel
Mother rocks in a chair at the edge of the forest
A speck beside the winking pond
Sometimes I see a salmon jump sideways
But there’s no splash
She brings me berries and rosemary
That’s when I ask about the salmon
The water from the well was all
I drank
And she told me the salmon drink it too
My, my, a landscape so green and blue
I’d smear the colors under my nose
But I can’t reach their taste
From my perch so Once I climbed the vines
They caught my hair And ripped a strand
Once I tied a message to a stranger’s wings
But the thing cried and twitched
So I held it like I would a dripping handful of blueberries
Then to the soil-pot of some saggy gardenias
I steered its beak and watched it peck
I pretended we both had teeth and mimicked its nibbles
With nothing to chew but air and saliva
Eventually I bit a petal
And it melted like sugar
The sweet was the smallest maze of relief
In the space I was built to live Guarded by married brick
And cement Where swallows dive between the open shutters
When mother returns I tuck away My shiny dreams
I say the light outside is too bright Let’s stay by the fire
About the Author:
Hannah Calkin was born and raised in South Portland, Maine. She recently graduated from the University of Maine at Farmington with a B.F.A. in Creative Writing and was awarded the 2018 Creative Writing Award for excellence by the faculty. Her first book of poetry, Pomegranate Odyssey, will be available from Unsolicited Press in August 2019.
