You always read about it:
the plumber with the twelve children
who wins the Irish Sweepstakes.
From toilets to riches.
That story.
Or the nursemaid,
some luscious sweet from Denmark
who captures the oldest son's heart.
from diapers to Dior.
That story.
Or a milkman who serves the wealthy,
eggs, cream, butter, yogurt, milk,
the white truck like an ambulance
who goes into real estate
and makes a pile.
From homogenized to martinis at lunch.
Or the charwoman
who is on the bus when it cracks up
and collects enough from the insurance.
From mops to Bonwit Teller.
That story.
Once
the wife of a rich man was on her deathbed
and she said to her daughter Cinderella:
Be devout. Be good. Then I will smile
down from heaven in the seam of a cloud.
The man took another wife who had
two daughters, pretty enough
but with hearts like blackjacks.
Cinderella was their maid.
She slept on the sooty hearth each night
and walked around looking like Al Jolson.
Her father brought presents home from town,
jewels and gowns for the other women
but the twig of a tree for Cinderella.
She planted that twig on her mother's grave
and it grew to a tree where a white dove sat.
Whenever she wished for anything the dove
would drop it like an egg upon the ground.
The bird is important, my dears, so heed him.
Next came the ball, as you all know.
It was a marriage market.
The prince was looking for a wife.
All but Cinderella were preparing
and gussying up for the event.
Cinderella begged to go too.
Her stepmother threw a dish of lentils
into the cinders and said: Pick them
up in an hour and you shall go.
The white dove brought all his friends;
all the warm wings of the fatherland came,
and picked up the lentils in a jiffy.
No, Cinderella, said the stepmother,
you have no clothes and cannot dance.
That's the way with stepmothers.
Cinderella went to the tree at the grave
and cried forth like a gospel singer:
Mama! Mama! My turtledove,
send me to the prince's ball!
The bird dropped down a golden dress
and delicate little slippers.
Rather a large package for a simple bird.
So she went. Which is no surprise.
Her stepmother and sisters didn't
recognize her without her cinder face
and the prince took her hand on the spot
and danced with no other the whole day.
As nightfall came she thought she'd better
get home. The prince walked her home
and she disappeared into the pigeon house
and although the prince took an axe and broke
it open she was gone. Back to her cinders.
These events repeated themselves for three days.
However on the third day the prince
covered the palace steps with cobbler's wax
and Cinderella's gold shoe stuck upon it.
Now he would find whom the shoe fit
and find his strange dancing girl for keeps.
He went to their house and the two sisters
were delighted because they had lovely feet.
The eldest went into a room to try the slipper on
but her big toe got in the way so she simply
sliced it off and put on the slipper.
The prince rode away with her until the white dove
told him to look at the blood pouring forth.
That is the way with amputations.
They just don't heal up like a wish.
The other sister cut off her heel
but the blood told as blood will.
The prince was getting tired.
He began to feel like a shoe salesman.
But he gave it one last try.
This time Cinderella fit into the shoe
like a love letter into its envelope.
At the wedding ceremony
the two sisters came to curry favor
and the white dove pecked their eyes out.
Two hollow spots were left
like soup spoons.
Cinderella and the prince
lived, they say, happily ever after,
like two dolls in a museum case
never bothered by diapers or dust,
never arguing over the timing of an egg,
never telling the same story twice,
never getting a middle-aged spread,
their darling smiles pasted on for eternity.
Regular Bobbsey Twins.
That story.
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Comments
1 - 14 of 14
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Amazed
Wow!!! I loved it. The ironic tone, and laughing bitterness that rings through this poem. It is sharp, poigmant, wow. -
Awesome!!
oh my gosh.. this is so totally awesome.. LOL!!
it's the first time I've read Anne Sexton, and gosh, it's pretty hard to believe that she had mental breakdowns due to depression..
i totally love the way she creates a parody out of the classic.
blood and gore..
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hahahaha i loved it...
my teacher sent me to research Anne Sexton... its proving to be the best homework he ever gave me! bless him lol it was a differential research for each teacher. They just read me like a book. For art I had Kathe Kollwitz, and for English this. I love it. Its just absolutely marvelous. Perfect!
The best critique I've heard, the most influential until now. The most hilarious too!
Oh I forgot I read the real Cinderella story and it is just as she portrays it... so gory. Wicked but marvelous.
hmmm my type of poetry. -
WOW but...
From guest zeynep (contact)
It doesnt ryme and it isnt poetry so why is it on this web but i love the interest and the lovely parts so its actually a not wow its a wowow -
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well...
poetry doest have to rhyme. as long as it conveys the meaning and the message it was meant who are we to say what is poetry and what is not? -
To guest zeynep and others
The definition of poetry has become very vague and we nowadays seem to take anything with a "poetic feeling" to be a poem.
I am sure you, like me, have a personal opinion of that but in order to show the works of these fine writers we allow a degree of leeway.
Although not quite as much as a definition I once heard.
"Poetry is where the lines don't go all the way acros the page!"
Jim
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This is so amazing.
I know that story.
whisper
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From guest chyrene (contact)
Madam Anne Sexton you know ,we are discussing your cinderella its amazing as i've read in our book... Thank you I learn another version of cinderella -
Beautiful
This is a very amazing classical tale and the selection of words is excellent.the rhyme flow is also very nice."Cinderella and the prince
lived, they say, happily ever after,"
here the beauty of expression is "they Say" -
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now this was a treat to read.
this is appealing with it's Cinderella twist. i never thought how fairy tales remain frozen in time. happily-ever-after is only in fairy tales after all
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Definitely an awesome poem to read, really descriptive and enjoyable. I love how it isn't your typical Disney Cinderella fairytale type story, I definitely like this version a whole lot more. This was just basically awesome.
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I did a report on this and I just love it!!
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i did this peice for speech one year...i just love the sarcastic tone of it! this peice is just amazing. i also like the fact that it says there is no happily ever after...fits in with her depressive attitude. amazing!
~Linds -
What an amazing piece of sabre sharp, sarcastic wit. I love this Cinderella tale of blood, cobblers wax, and lentil eating doves
It is a very funny story but it rips the original to shreads.
Love it.
~von~
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this was absolutely wonderful. I laughed throughout the whole piece. I mean, really I don't think I have ever heard Cinderella told in quite that way before. The sarcasm and way it makes you take a good hard look at fairy tales and reality really did it for me. I am in awe.
~JayLynn
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Oh...this is delectable. All those little snips and snipes of ascerbic wit interspersed throughout the Grimm-est tale I've ever read - almost certainly, therefore, closer to the original than the sanitized version Disney sold us. I so love this piece...particularly the last stanza. It isn't the "once upon a time"s that get us....it's those damned "happily ever after"s....there's just no such thing. Of all the fairy stories ever written, the boldest lies told in them are found in that repetitive last line.
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