Trials


Swallowed early by a wolf,
she carved her freedom from the red
hunger of wild muscle,
and later,
                with raucous giants
closing ground, her agile fingers
fashioned straw into the finest possible
passage home.

Beset by poverty and suitors,
she stopped her ears and took to rambling
high the mossy hills and low
the roads to sea, until two unnetted fishes
gave, as recompense for her kindness,
a clutch of wishes disguised as simple sticks –
enough to topple kings and lovers
over-eager –
                     wealth which held well into
the ease of age until, starving in his lust,
her rejections taught a traveling prince
to taste the sugar of desert dates.

Egunguns and Tengu tamed,
Maiden Liu and Hiiaka met well,
so many years fulfilled,
and still a ghost begs justice
be brought to him as a garnet ring
and set inside his broken bones,
desperate that she speak
the secrets under the floorboards
unblushing,
                    and still her father
schemes to spend her life
in payment for the patter of rain across
barren clay, to fatten goats on summer grass
until the wolf comes
                             for her again.