Alexandra Seidel is our February Selected Poet

You can email Alexandra at: alexa.seidel@googlemail.com

RED RIDING HOOD WATCHES THE WOLF

Licking along your teeth’s edge
with your soft pink tongue
you show off that pearly white
and I think you’re not a smoker at least

Grease drips from your fingers
and runs down your hands
and you chew the meat at a leisurely pace
exposing bone
white bone that your tongue and
your lips caress
always looking for a tiny speck
of meat you missed

I have felt for a long time
when your eyes licked over me in the same way
that you hunger for something else
something soft
and I would not say it less it comes true

how elegant when you wipe your hands
and your mouth
on that white napkin
and smile

“I am glad you brought wine,”
you tell me
and it feels like your tongue intended
to weave a different meaning
from those words

THE GARGOYLE'S EYES
 
He is a gargoyle
No maiden’s singing ever
touched his eyes with silver mist
and his heart shuts tighter
than a gravestone
 
He is a gargoyle
proud when rain weaves his mantle
and content with shadows
as companions
his gaze pierces the blackest night
but falters when dawn dances
at the horizon
 
He is a gargoyle and he crouches
on a stone pedestal
throne of might and folly
monument to grander things
forgotten like their names
 
his claws click
on the masonry as if they want earth
and his wings are poised
as if they want air
his mouth is open
as if it wants words
and his eyes—
 
the gargoyle’s eyes
are watching
and they want tears

THE GHOST OUTSIDE
 
The moon cast no shadows on the floor
 
and silence was all
that should have touched my ears
 
yet outside my cold study
the sound springs to life
pulls open the curtain of my eyes’ lids
 
She taps softly on my window
my mother’s ghost
her pale fingers and polished nails strike the glass
like tiny hammers
 
The lips of the ghost
--my mother’s ghost
are frozen in shock
and continue to wail
in death as they did in life
 
I hear the familiar tapping
and I turn and I look
at her hands and fingers and nails
and her thin-lipped angry mouth
and her gray-streaked hair and her
graveyard clothes
 
My eyes see everything except her eyes
that float at the edge of perception
and threaten
--I believe they are threatening
the cold stare the vengeful glance
the absence of warmth
that death could hardly draw in deeper lines
 
the ribbon round her wrist
the ribbon round my wrist
joint as we were in life
the red thread continues to bind us
in spirit
for I am her blood and her bone
and her eyes are like mine
at this side of the fragile mirror glass
 
so she comes to me every night
reminder and warning alike
the tapping a sound
I have got used to
Almost
I imagine it’s like when she sang me to sleep
with her crooked voice and
stood by my bed with her crooked mind
resting her hands on my heavy heavy pillow

Alexandra Seidel likes taking walks at night and is very averse to pink and/or frilly clothing. She also happens to write prose and poetry. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Bottom Of The World Magazine, Zygote In My Coffee, Foundling Review, Nights and Weekends, 34thParallel, Niteblade, decomP and Word Riot.

Alexandra was born in Kassel, which is famous for being the home of the Brothers Grimm, the guys with the fairy tales.