Red
Her heart hung upside down and arced like a story of furry children in desperate
attire (wings, feathers, tutu, crowns of spoons). Her hair was a muscle of
pinecones and nut butter. She was not a Presbyterian, as some have debated. She
was, however, endowed with bells.
I’ve exhausted all my intuition, she said, inching along the path like lichen; in other
words, she was a tiny tot with flammable hair. The woods make me sad, she said,
and grief makes me furl along the path like a fern in a tiara.
The woods the woods the woods the woods the woods: like a human heart located
halfway between the sixth dimension and Walmart, with a wolf who was
perpendicular to all he cared about. Red said, I’ve got a plan, and the woods
stopped thumping. The two, disguised as non-smokers, fairytaled ever after.
| Maureen Seaton & Neil de la Flor |
|
levelheaded: Red
This poem’s mode is intertextuality. The Little Red Riding Hood allusions are deferred until the final stanza, but by then they’re unmistakable. It seems that “she” is the titular “Red”; the poem dwells on “the woods”; a wolf pops in; and the poem ends with Red and that wolf “fairytal[ing] ever after.” In the first stanza, “as some have debated” admits that Red’s been discussed—as we naturally retell, elaborate, and talk about stories.
“[I]n other / words”: The phrase is tossed off about halfway in. “I’ve exhausted all my intuition, she said, inching along the path like lichen; in other / words, she was a tiny tot with flammable hair.” A spoken observation of hers, combined with a slow movement, is equated with this definition of her—it’s not her utterance, this “tiny tot” fragment that erupts the equation. These are in fact very “other words”—not at all paraphrase, but someone else’s take completely.
The poem’s focal “Red” depends on her intertextual context. She’s not Little Red Riding Hood in this poem, but her descendant. We’re asked, then, to examine how the two compare; what connotations link to red (and the tale) today? Power, sex, danger. And, since our “Red” is a redhead, we should consider how we think of redheads today (take a look at the ranging complexity of redheaded history!). How will our associations with the color and the hair color change over time (will they?)? What would a poem responding to Little Red Riding Hood, or to this poem, look like 50 years down the road?
Location plays a big part in “Red”—or, more precisely, dislocation plays a big part. These “woods” are markedly not the woods we know from Little Red Riding Hood. They’re compared to “a human heart located / halfway between the sixth dimension and Walmart,” a disoriented place indeed.
Interactivity is empowering; instead of the passive reception of activity, engagement gives us a way to talk back. (Douglas Rushkoff says a big example of this empowering interactivity is the television remote control.) Intertextuality shows that a writer has been drawn into a narrative’s arc (see: “Her heart hung upside down and arced like a story”)—but also that the writer can negotiate the arc, or even break out at will.
Is it coincidental that the poem’s centerpiece is a redhead—and has the same sonic boom as the past tense of the verb “to read”? Is the poem nodding to all those heads with reading inside them? On the whole, past tense works hard in this poem, corresponding with fairy tales’ trademark “Once upon a time” and “ever after.”
– The Editors
