Published by Associate Editor on February 24, 2015. This item is listed in Uncategorized

Crossing the Fairy Threshold

She sprinkled my head with dust. She offered me a table with glass bottles and glass plates. Drink me, they said, Eat me. One said, Swallow, but close your eyes. On her palm she held a green pill and a red pill and said, Your choice. On the floor were a pair of red slippers. She said, Click your heels three times, or maybe she said nine or thirteen. She said she wanted my tongue, my mother, my hands, my first born for spun gold, for a chance to kiss a prince, marry a king, wake the sleep of briar. Figuring all this was fairy magic, fairy tale, fairy mirth, fairy dust, I swallowed, I ate, I clicked, I bowed my head for the dusting. I found the door to a room in my kitchen I didn’t know existed. I knocked three times, chanted the charm, said the password. I did everything. I did all. I let the thing be done.

Laura Madeline Wiseman is the author of Some Fatal Effects of Curiosity and Disobedience (Lavender Ink, 2014), Queen of the Platform (Anaphora Literary Press, 2013), Sprung (San Francisco Bay Press, 2012), and the collaborative book Intimates and Fools (Les Femmes Folles Books, 2014) with artist Sally Deskins, as well as two letterpress books, and eight chapbooks, including Spindrift (Dancing Girl Press, 2014). She is the editor of Women Write Resistance: Poets Resist Gender Violence (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2013). Wiseman has a doctorate from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She has received an Academy of American Poets Award, the Wurlitzer Foundation Fellowship, and her work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Mid-American Review, Margie, and Feminist Studies. www.lauramadelinewiseman.com

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