It was never the witch,

but the second time
the woodcutter agrees
the children need to die—

that’s what sticks.

Twice, their father leaves them
to the trees.

Twice, their father asks the forest
to do his work—

be it bear, wild boar,
or wolf pack.

•

The stories we’re told
as children reside
permanently inside us.

Like measuring cups,

one fear sits snugly
inside the next, teaching
us to tidy our darkness

into the smallest
amount of space.

A child learns:

What has claws
is always hungry;

what is hungry
has hidden claws.

When there’s a shadow
in the thicket, never
let grown-ups
convince you it’s not

waiting for you.

Grown-ups will
never stop trying

to convince you . . .

•

This story wants us
to understand,
it is hard for the father

to do this to his children.

In a later version
of the tale, the father

weeps piteously
before agreeing.

But the grain’s gone
to rot: it’s one of those
centuries where God’s

more AWOL than usual,
& the grown-ups

need to eat.

The children’s mother
is the designated villain
of the tale, who badgers

the father until he agrees

yes, yes, the children
need to die.

But in the final,
revised edition,

she is left purposely
murky: the “stepmother,”
or “wife,” or simply

“the woman,” the editors

coming to understand
through parental feedback

that being killed by one’s
mother is too upsetting
to be instructive.

In the first version
of the tale,
the father agrees

to killing his children
twice, “because
he had done it once.”

In a later edition,

the logic goes, “He
who says A
must also say B.”

In every version
of this story,
the children’s father

is their father.

•

You will remember,

the children escape
the witch—the girl
broiling her in the oven—

& further demonstrate
what they’ve learned
from their adventures

by robbing her on the way
out the door. Perhaps less

explicable to grown-ups,
the children return again
to their father’s cottage,

where “the woman,”
now not their mother,
is somehow & deservedly

dead. They’ve returned

to the treacherous house
with enormous treasure
for their father:

the boy, joyous
in his father’s arms,

& the girl, forever
stationed on the page
where we’ve left her—

stopped inside the door,

red apron sagging
with the mass of precious
stones she’s lugged home—

all that heavy luster; what the girl
killed to get.

(winner of the Editors Prize in Poetry for issue 42)