Karen Pierce Gonzalez
What Happens in the Dark When It’s Cold Outside
Nobody ever asked me
about any of it.
People don’t want to hear
the stories of an old woman.
But I know things. About
the girl, the wolf, what
happened that night
when the moon moved past
the woods and the ground
grew too cold for snow.
They say she was on her way
to bring me gifts, but the only
times she would call was when
she hankered for a sucker
or wanted a dress for a dance.
I pinned the chiffon snug
around her waist and small
breasts, the hem mid-thigh
because she would baste it
up a whole hem if I didn’t.
Did her mother make her visit?
She is never blamed, the wolf
faulted for his gruesome end,
and me for being old and needy.
I am old and need to be heard.
What really went on that night?
I doubt there was a loaf
as nobody at her house bakes.
I might have been her excuse
for the hidden wine bottle.
When her lover didn’t show up
the wolf gave her dog’s comfort
and it wasn’t in my bed but
out there on the frozen ground
under the tall and scowling firs.
Only her lover ran by my house
searching for her, a manic ax
poised in his grip, ready to claim
his possession. She turned her
back on the wolf’s red love
to receive the addictive blade
ignoring the rusty stains on
its steel so cold it negates itself.
Everybody blames someone
but study how it played out.
Luanne Castle’s Kin Types, a chapbook of poetry and flash, was finalist for the 2018 Eric Hoffer Award. Her first collection of poetry, Doll God, won the 2015 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award. Luanne has been a Fellow at the Center for Ideas and Society at the University of California, Riverside. She studied at University of California, Riverside (PhD); Western Michigan University (MFA); and Stanford University. Her poetry and prose have appeared in Copper Nickel, American Journal of Poetry, Pleiades, River Teeth, TAB, Verse Daily, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Broad Street, and other journals.
At home in Northern California, Karen Pierce Gonzalez is a mixed-media assemblage artist. Her work has been shown at Truckenbrod Gallery (Oregon), Santa Rosa Arts Center, Sebastopol Center for the Arts, TINY GALLERIES, Virtual Art in the Park and other places. Each piece is a conversation with tree bark, branches, roots, chalk/oil pastels, fibers, found materials and, when lucky (really lucky), salmon leather. Website: karenpiercegonzalez.blogspot.com.