Wine

by Alexandra Seidel

Lounging in high summer grass
and listening to wolves’ tongues
spouting lies and crude deceptions
the little girl with her red cap wonders
how the world could become like this
a place that once was placid forest
woods growing thick and breaking light
at their own leisure and then
thinning woods like thinning hair on a hag’s
head, birds chirping, but chirping less.
She wonders while she listens to the wolves,
gray fur sparkling silver in the sun, handsome
paws and snout, bright tongues licking
when words do not occupy them.
The girl’s wine is spilled
on the grass and she decides to pick up
her wicker basket and look for the forest
within the forest, that which is wise and old
with the cake in her basket she goes,
that and the no longer full bottle of the wine
is all she managed to salvage.

Alexandra Seidel‘s poetry has appeared in Sybil’s Garage, Twice the Terror: The Horror Zine Anthology, Space and Time Magazine and others.