Rapunzel, Three Months after Her Escape

by Ruth Baumann

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Rapunzel’s shoulders are too small for this.

Some would say she asked for it,
walking around full of arbitrary light.

Night breathes
into a paper bag.   She employs
the distancing narrative, her body
so good at pretending to be a body.

Rapunzel traces her bloody footsteps
back to the ghost-hole & one step
further. It never happened she promises
up her spine like little cat-teeth.

She pinks. It never happened she promises

while it is in fact happening while
there are these hands on her flesh,
there are arms in this poem,
she is pressed to the dirt.

Animals smell sorrow in the wind,
Rapunzel, dissolve this under your tongue
Rapunzel:

once you start emigrating you cannot stop.

 

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About the Author

Ruth Baumann is an MFA student at the University of Memphis, & Poetry Editor of The Pinch. If you want, you can find her publications at https://ruthbaumann.wordpress.com/