Ghazal on a Reading by a New York City Poet

In her version of the fairy tale, the woodsman never arrives at the cottage—
  the wolf is in bed, dressed up as grandma, and what’s inside is the kid.

The kid never gets out. No symbolic rebirthing image of wolf being cut open
  and girl being pulled out in the nick—help never arrived for the kid.

That’s just how it is, she says—like on that train in India packed with families
  hugging the coast when the tsunami hit: the wave didn’t subside for any kid.

Or My Lai forty years ago, she adds, when another wave swept over this country,
  across rice paddies and farmers who were on the wrong side of kids.

At the podium, she takes a swig of water, then laughs, joking how as a ‘‘hippie’’
  she stuck whipped cream cans up her nose to inhale nitrous oxide as a kid.

The country was going up in flames, she says, and cops were trying to put them
  out with tear gas and water hoses—over there, how many who died were kids?

Isn’t it shitty? she asks—then dedicates the next poem to marijuana brownies,
  to smoking hash and sleeping around, and other things she tried as a kid.

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