NEW WORLD GHOST STORY
Here lies the house
that she traded for blood,
that the siblings still
fight over—the domicile that
repels division.
Of course, it would be
filled with white
ghosts inside and white
ghosts outside, calling
about the white fence around the
way of telling you this is about
the time ông ngoại laughed
in the face of a ghost
that pressed nightly on his
chest, he was so full up
of it :: terror repeated long
enough becomes pure
comedy and what else can you
do but laugh and laugh
about the time the nuns on
bicycles shouted slurs
against the new neighbors,
taking. Or the time that
I wandered into the backyard
and finally knew a dead thing.
Or how ông ngoại, out of
nostalgia and spite,
snapped the neck
of the chicken he kept
right there on the front lawn
for our supper without
pause, luck unraveling
in his raspy hands.
On the sidewalk, a pair of
mistaken ghosts
mounted their bloodied bicycles,
mouthed oh
oh
oh
and fled
THE ONE IN WHICH THE WOLF WINS
We cut you out of it
the whole belly
giving way to red
determination
on the bed, an apology
and a DNR note left for
tidy ends that
Red refused
to believe the cost
of cunning
An inheritance
of the deep woods
or that the price
of staying whole
means hunting the little
girl with the bread, the
one who wandered into
the world as a wonder.
Sharp little red who
loved a simple, beautiful
flower more than herself,
who trusted everything,
except her own nose and
eyes. To find her deeply
set into one’s own basket:
your children, your first-
born child. The cost
to cut her out and
carry a rotting head
home to recall one’s
place among the hunger,
among the dogtooth violets.
LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD
after the Brothers Grimm
Half a league from the village
Little Red entered the wolf
what a wicked creature
to have something good
pretty flowers growing everywhere
and deeper into the house
the wolf lifted the latch
without saying a word
she could carry no more
the stones were so heavy
what big ears
what large hands
the wolf’s skin
revived Little Red
to run into the wood
to guard her way
the house was a great stone
the child began to slip
Jessica Q. Stark is a poet and educator living in Jacksonville, Florida. Her first full-length poetry collection, Savage Pageant, was published by Birds, LLC in March 2020 and was named one of the “Best Poetry Books of 2020” in the Boston Globe and in Hyperallergic. She is the author of three poetry chapbooks, including INNANET (forthcoming 2021, The Offending Adam). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Pleiades, Hobart Pulp, Tupelo Quarterly, Glass Poetry Journal, among others. She serves as a Poetry Editor for AGNI and the Comics Editor for Honey Literary. She teaches writing at the University of North Florida.
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