Snow White, Rose Red

After Anne Sexton

No matter what life you lead1

the body is an engine

that must be fed;

caviar or beetroot, the inner

furnace stoked.

There are other hungers,

and there is a cost.

And so there were two girls, not yet eighteen,

hair thick as hemp. One dark as a gallows bird.

One pale as a turnip. Let us call them

Snow White and Rose Red,

They were good girls both, with bellies

like empty cauldrons slung beneath their ribs,

and families to feed: Mama, Papa, siblings galore.

They loved one another like sisters.

Two kings as well.

The first big as a farmboy with cheeks

like slabs of mutton. The second small

as an afterthought, sharp as a straight-razor.

They prospered like a younger son in Grimm.

Perhaps there was spellwork involved. Something

dark and chthonic. Perhaps not.

Either way, with their complementary talents,

their preference for goose liver,

and truffles, they agreed to share

a kingdom, draping themselves in fur and honey.

Dear reader,

this is a story of hungers.

Our two maidens applied to work in the castle

where, word on the street, (which always knows

the way the wind is blowing) said hundreds of girls

toiled toward their beds of roses,

each as clean as an egg, sweet as a lamb.

And so it was. Day and night these good girls

plied scissors and needle, side by side. Beautiful

clothes spilled from their hands. Seven days

a week they toiled in coffin-shaped towers; fourteen

hours a...