---

Anne Sexton - Red Riding Hood
Work rating: Low

Many are the deceivers: 
The suburban matron, 
proper in the supermarket, 
list in hand so she won`t suddenly fly, 
buying her Duz and Chuck Wagon dog food, 
meanwhile ascending from earth, 
letting her stomach fill up with helium, 
letting her arms go loose as kite tails, 
getting ready to meet her lover 
a mile down Apple Crest Road 
in the Congregational Church parking lot. 
Two seemingly respectable women 
come up to an old Jenny 
and show her an envelope 
full of money 
and promise to share the booty 
if she`ll give them ten thou 
as an act of faith. 
Her life savings are under the mattress 
covered with rust stains 
and counting. 
They are as wrinkled as prunes 
but negotiable. 
The two women take the money and disappear. 
Where is the moral? 
Not all knives are for 
stabbing the exposed belly. 
Rock climbs on rock 
and it only makes a seashore. 
Old Jenny has lost her belief in mattresses 
and now she has no wastebasket in which 
to keep her youth. 
The standup comic 
on the "Tonight" show 
who imitates the Vice President 
and cracks up Johnny Carson 
and delays sleep for millions 
of bedfellows watching between their feet, 
slits his wrist the next morning 
in the Algonquin`s old-fashioned bathroom, 
the razor in his hand like a toothbrush, 
wall as anonymous as a urinal, 
the shower curtain his slack rubberman audience, 
and then the slash 
as simple as opening as a letter 
and the warm blood breaking out like a rose 
upon the bathtub with its claw and ball feet. 
And I. I too. 
Quite collected at cocktail parties, 
meanwhile in my head 
I`m undergoing open-heart surgery. 
The heart, poor fellow, 
pounding on his little tin drum 
with a faint death beat, 
The heart, that eyeless beetle, 
running panicked through his maze, 
never stopping one foot after the other 
one hour after the other 
until he gags on an apple 
and it`s all over. 
And I. I too again. 
I built a summer house on Cape Ann. 
A simple A-frame and this too was 
a deception — nothing haunts a new house. 
When I moved in with a bathing suit and tea bags 
the ocean rumbled like a train backing up 
and at each window secrets came in 
like gas. My mother, that departed soul, 
sat in my Eames chair and reproached me 
for losing her keys to the old cottage. 
Even in the electric kitchen there was 
the smell of a journey. The ocean 
was seeping through its frontiers 
and laying me out on its wet rails. 
The bed was stale with my childhood 
and I could not move to another city 
where the worthy make a new life. 
Long ago 
there was a strange deception: 
a wolf dressed in frills, 
a kind of transvestite. 
But I get ahead of my story. 
In the beginning 
there was just little Red Riding Hood, 
so called because her grandmother 
made her a red cape and she was never without it. 
It was her Linus blanket, besides 
it was red, as red as the Swiss flag, 
yes it was red, as red as chicken blood, 
But more than she loved her riding hood 
she loved her grandmother who lived 
far from the city in the big wood. 
This one day her mother gave her 
a basket of wine and cake 
to take to her grandmother 
because she was ill. 
Wine and cake? 
Where`s the aspirin? The penicillin? 
Where`s the fruit juice? 
Peter Rabbit got chamomile tea. 
But wine and cake it was. 
On her way in the big wood 
Red Riding Hood met the wolf. 
Good day, Mr. Wolf, she said, 
thinking him no more dangerous 
than a streetcar or a panhandler. 
He asked where she was going 
and she obligingly told him 
There among the roots and trunks 
with the mushrooms pulsing inside the moss 
he planned how to eat them both, 
the grandmother an old carrot 
and the child a shy budkin 
in a red red hood. 
He bade her to look at the bloodroot, 
the small bunchberry and the dogtooth 
and pick some for her grandmother. 
And this she did. 
Meanwhile he scampered off 
to Grandmother`s house and ate her up 
as quick as a slap. 
Then he put on her nightdress and cap 
and snuggled down in to bed. 
A deceptive fellow. 
Red Riding hood 
knocked on the door and entered 
with her flowers, her cake, her wine. 
Grandmother looked strange, 
a dark and hairy disease it seemed. 
Oh Grandmother, what big ears you have, 
ears, eyes, hands and then the teeth. 
The better to eat you with my dear. 
So the wolf gobbled Red Riding Hood down 
like a gumdrop. Now he was fat. 
He appeared to be in his ninth month 
and Red Riding Hood and her grandmother 
rode like two Jonahs up and down with 
his every breath. One pigeon. One partridge. 
He was fast asleep, 
dreaming in his cap and gown, 
wolfless. 
Along came a huntsman who heard 
the loud contented snores 
and knew that was no grandmother. 
He opened the door and said, 
So it`s you, old sinner. 
He raised his gun to shoot him 
when it occurred to him that maybe 
the wolf had eaten up the old lady. 
So he took a knife and began cutting open 
the sleeping wolf, a kind of caesarian section. 
It was a carnal knife that let 
Red Riding Hood out like a poppy, 
quite alive from the kingdom of the belly. 
And grandmother too 
still waiting for cakes and wine. 
The wolf, they decided, was too mean 
to be simply shot so they filled his belly 
with large stones and sewed him up. 
He was as heavy as a cemetery 
and when he woke up and tried to run off 
he fell over dead. Killed by his own weight. 
Many a deception ends on such a note. 
The huntsman and the grandmother and Red Riding Hood 
sat down by his corpse and had a meal of wine and cake. 
Those two remembering 
nothing naked and brutal 
from that little death, 
that little birth, 
from their going down 
and their lifting up.
Source
The script ran 0.003 seconds.