Today's poem is by Catherine Broadwall

Fairy Tale with an AR-15
       

I should not have been surprised that the spider in my hair
turned out to be a breadcrumb. Nor by the apples
that tumbled from the tree, each looking like one bite

had been taken from it, tooth-marred and exact. As if
the witch had forgotten which fruit held the poison
and decided to try all of them herself. The apples

like Renaissance cherub cheeks: rosy and round and
delicious. Men prowl the streets with enormous, polished
guns. They cradle them like I might a baguette. And I should

not be surprised when the dragon scorches the wheat fields
to dust. The orchards to ash. I should not be surprised by
my wandering, barefoot, trying to pick seeds from all that wreckage.

The compass in my pocket is silent for once. It does not know
what to say either. We watch as the sword in the stone is
repainted with a mural of a stake in the heart of the world—

one with a silencer, one with a trigger. It happened
so silently until we heard it: the crackling our banners,
our very own rooftops. If there were a spider living

in my hair, I would place him on the rose bush
growing by the sea. I would say to him, Spin thread to suture
this chasm. Lord knows I cannot see the other side from here.

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Copyright © 2023 Catherine Broadwall All rights reserved
from Fulgurite
Cornerstone Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission