Tag Archives: age

Princesses: Where are they now? (Part two: Cinderella) by Sarah Thomasin

30 Saturday Jan 2016

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Princesses: Where are they now?
(Part Two: Cinderella)

King Charming and Queen Cinderella have been on the throne 65 years and are both still going strong. Some of the more snobbish members of the court joke that the queen, with her commoner’s upbringing, had no intention of wasting her good fortune with an early death. The king, though, attributes their long lives to the vegan diet his wife – a lifelong animal rights activist – introduced to the palace shortly after their coronation. “I never knew a hearty bean stew could be so satisfying until Cinders gave our chefs a few tutorials!” He tells anyone who asks if he misses venison and partridge. “And it’s much more fun riding into the woods to pet the deer than to shoot them full of arrows!” Cinderella, always honest with herself, and not about to enter any self delusion at this late stage of life, freely admits that the court snobs may have a point: remembering the drudgery and hunger of her youth, she absolutely revels in luxury, enjoying every minute of the life of a royal. Something she was less keen on in the early years was the transparently mercenary about-turn from her stepmother and sisters. She tolerated their simpering adulation for a few years, until her husband pointed out that, as queen, she really didn’t have to. Her relatives were placated with impressive sounding duchies as far from the palace as could be managed – with the explicit understanding that any word of her subjects being ill treated would bring about a speedy and ignoble end to their good fortune.

Her silver hair swept up in a graceful knot, Queen Cinderella still likes to play with the (much gentler) descendants of “Rucifee” by the fireside. Charming laughs fondly as she warms her hands at the glowing coals, looking for all the world like the serving maid he fell in love with all those years ago.

Sarah Thomasin is a performance poet living in Sheffield. As well as saying poems out loud at every opportunity, they have had poems published in Now Then magazine, and in two English Pen collections, three Pankhearst Slim Volume anthologies (No Love Lost, Wherever You Roam, and This Body I Live In), The Sheffield Anthology (poems from the city imagined) and Poems For the Queer Revolution. They were also commissioned to create a limerick quiz about gender which appears in Kate Bornstein’s My New Gender Workbook. You can find Sarah online at www.sarahthomasin.com.

Princesses: Where Are They Now? (Part One: Snow White) by Sarah Thomasin

23 Saturday Jan 2016

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Princesses: Where are they now?
(Part One: Snow White)

People often mistake her name for a reference to her hair, these days. When she tells them no, that was the name she was born with, and strokes her tanned, wrinkled, liver spotted cheek, murmuring “white as snow” the nurses smile fondly at each other. Her lips are still bright red though, the lipstick applied with a shaky hand. They call her obstinate. The prince – the king – died years ago. He was a few years older when they married, but that sort of thing didn’t raise eyebrows, in those days. Still, she’d have liked to stay with the dwarves. The closest to parents that she ever knew, truth be told. Although she never really let them nurture her – she never really knew how. Letting yourself be loved wasn’t a skill she’d needed. They would have loved her like a daughter though, if she’d let them, and that meant a lot. Sometimes she catches herself in the mirror (an old heirloom): gaunt face, dark ringed eyes, a slash of crimson, and starts, seeing her stepmother again. She wonders, vaguely, if life is really fair to widowed queens.

Sarah Thomasin is a performance poet living in Sheffield. As well as saying poems out loud at every opportunity, they have had poems published in Now Then magazine, and in two English Pen collections, three Pankhearst Slim Volume anthologies (No Love Lost, Wherever You Roam, and This Body I Live In), The Sheffield Anthology (poems from the city imagined) and Poems For the Queer Revolution. They were also commissioned to create a limerick quiz about gender which appears in Kate Bornstein’s My New Gender Workbook. You can find Sarah online at www.sarahthomasin.com.

Bacchus as an Old Man by Grant Tarbard

27 Friday Nov 2015

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Bacchus as an Old Man

Life is a box of Christmas lights tangled
As eyes, as raving as maenads in fawn
Skins weaving ivy wreaths for lovers that
Do not come, betrothed with a swift breath curse.
This lethargic Dionysus pleads to
Be widowed, he wears a bulls head bloated
On the sofa, still intoxicated
With the dance, a bastard infixed as a
Vine. He becomes a congregation of
Moths amongst a tangle of cardigans
Whose silence resurrects the allusion
Of rain, now threads of light come in a can.
He becomes a lion tamer without
A lion, a re-arranger of chairs.

These bodies hover
about me where streets
used to be my own,

white whispers tearing
up the pages of
a life lived unsung.

 

Grant Tarbard is widely published. His first pamphlet Yellow Wolf is out now from WK Press.

Frozen in time by Michele Brenton

25 Sunday Jan 2015

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Frozen in time

I peek between the curtains

my nose hit by the cold
watching the hailstones
driving against the glass.

The wind seems to be quieter
if I stare at it hard.
I’m not like Elsa
the cold bothers me
and I’d like to build a snowman
anyway.

Icy lumps gather on the window frame.
I close the curtains again
tuck them behind the radiator,
wrap myself in a blanket,
debate whether to
turn the thermostat higher
or pull my hood up high
to conserve my body heat.

Today I feel old,
C-old, older than I’ve felt for ages
past the stages of youthfulness.

I think of Allison Gross
and wonder why she didn’t
just magic her chosen one
to see her as lovely,
maybe she wanted him to
love her truly and without
recourse to glamour
and then I wonder how cosmetic
companies would survive
if modern women took her
lead and mine.

I never bothered with glamour either
although my husband doesn’t see
the lines around my eyes,
the grey in my hair,
the drying of my skin;
what he calls visual impairment
I call the eyes of love.

 

 

Michele Brenton was born exactly 47 years after Dylan Thomas within a few hundred feet of the exact spot he was born. As @banana_the_poet she was voted the most popular human poet by the Twitter community in the Shorty Awards 2011. She writes poetry and is delighted, surprised and honoured each time her work is included in a publication. It happened first in 2001.

Michele Brenton’s Amazon Author Page

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