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Wind Spell —after Joy Harjo In the time before, it was never written down No pens. A long line of mouths. A wolfman hovers beyond the tree line, taste of flesh on his tongue. A basket over a girl’s arm, crumbs fallen. The predator prowls the woods, the path, the outlying cottages. He eats every unfortunate passerby. What he cannot eat, he saves for later. He makes wine. Jars flesh. Waits. Rumors run like pigs. Like school children. Like a mother’s butterfly stomach, weighted for the wind’s howl. Like shortcuts loafing toward full moon twilights. Like a basket inside a cottage door. A dandelion seed purchased where there is no wind spell for wishes to float free. Wait! Not this once. Instead, try Once there was a woods that was only a woods. The village folk used to go birding, speak to owls, hear the throaty croak of ravens, listen for the songs of a nightingale. They had lived together, cooked together, whispering rumors of red sky mornings. They had tried to pretend a wolfman hadn’t moved in, grandmother’s cottage was under construction and the disappeared had left only damp shadows soaked into paths. But once again Once upon another time Memory failed and the forest shadows grew larger and toothier with eyes sharp enough to see in the dark— the fallen fabric of a daughter’s red hood, the ribbon, the sash, a walking shoe wilting beside the path of pins the basket lined with cloth for protecting cakes Start with a different once! Once, after a lifetime lived inside the village walls grandmother had moved, longing for the seclusion of the forest. Trusting her granddaughter would come, she had left the cottage door unlatched, curled up in her nightgown, recalling memories of trips made when she had been a girl. Choosing her path. Before If the girl in the red hood starts here she’ll never make it to the end of her story. Someone has to keep her eyes open, sings her grandmother to the day, to the night, to the wind spell that can carry dandelion wishes to far-off places where it can seed into the heart’s loam and take root even as the girl walks the path of pins or that of needles. It would not matter. For even if grandmother was eaten, the girl would have the sense to escape. And she would find helpers along her journey home. Yes. Once upon this story.
Kristen Baum DeBeasi’s poetry has appeared in Blue Heron Review, Contrary Magazine, Menacing Hedge and elsewhere. She was Moon Tide Press’s Poet of the Month for July 2021. When she isn’t writing words or music, she loves testing new recipes and collecting fallen leaves or twigs for her fairy garden.
Cover: Amanda Bergloff Twitter @AmandaBergloff Instagram: amandabergloff