Donkey Skin-Man's Coat (Work in Progress)

Donkey Skin - Man's Coat (Work in Progress, based on Donkey Skin Tale in Andrew Lang's Fairy Book, where a father tries to marry his adopted daughter)

Donkey Skin - Man's Coat

(for my husband, Michael)

The mother dies or is absent

Maybe she drinks jug after jug

of cheapest table wine

The daughter hides in her royal chamber

cloistered in silk bed clothes

the curtains drawn

or perhaps she sits in her closet

pretending to be Amelia Earhart

in the darkness, seeing sky

The mother is laid in a grave fresh

or stops bathing

to avoid his loathsome touch

The daughter is fresh in morning

in black hat and dress

or perhaps fresh as morning in cotton

Her father weds her, bad as the Bay of Biscay

With old man ice hands he probes

to find his own boy self, lanky and pale

wedded to his own gray father

once upon the time

when he held innocence like an egg

Thus a chain of souls goes back to Lot

in certain families

a rank disease, tenacious as Virginia Creeper

The daughter, apoplectic

unable to move marmoreal limbs

or to speak

Even her own name

is a Shibboleth she cannot pronounce

gravel on her tongue

She is to blame

for her hair was unbound

for she slept naked at nine

like a white fleshen arrow

She skins a donkey

wraps herself in putrefaction

wearing death and ferocity.

Maybe she shaves her head and dons

her fathers old wool coat

with its moth balls

and is called sir or beast in 7-11

She hides herself

till one comes with courage

reaching fingers through the hide's opening

to translate her snarls and growls

to poetry

and lead her naked to the waters

Lucy Simpson

Seattle

5/2008