Abigail Mozley
Snow White
And as for you my girl,
with your paranoia, your Daddy, and the dirty dwarfs,
mooning your heart, laying yourself open
and out like cuts of meat on a butcher’s chart;
looking into too much with your specular art,
reading too much into mirrors -
a little self-obsessed maybe?
No, of course not, that was me,
your faithless father’s old queen bee;
while you were pure American Beauty,
blood on the snow, and roses.
It was your prince turned carrion knave
who framed you fatally in ebony, not me.
The fairest in the land
played possum once too often,
got stuck in her glass coffin,
ran out of useful spades
and failed to trump her last Houdini.
I could shake you for your silliness,
your cleverness, your high princessiness,
my dear dead airhead daughter.
I’m the old trout you so refused to become.
I faced the mirror head on,
ignored those rumours of incest that
you spread with pigs’ hearts, apples and the rest,
those succulent pork pies.
I can forgive you everything.
I outlived you, inherited the lot
while you rot, your children motherless.
I have grandchildren and tangerines,
we spit the pips into an open fire,
observe the snow, the looking glass, the roses.
Page(s) 11-12
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- Features
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- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
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- Atlas
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- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
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- Fabric
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- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
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- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
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- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
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- Poetry Salzburg Review
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- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
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- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
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- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The