Posts tagged Bluebeard
Posts tagged Bluebeard
“Her husband’s a serial killer, and her bodice is wet
with tears, but there’s a chance her brothers
will show up like winning lottery numbers.
Which does she want more - her hair wound
in the maniac’s hands and her white white throat bared,
or the sound of boots on the marble stairs?”
Ron Koertge, from “Bluebeard” in his collection of fairy tales in poetry, Lies, Knives, and Girls in Red Dresses, illustrated by Andrea Deszö.
I just wrote and sold my own Bluebeard riff, (“Stage Blood,” forthcoming at Subterranean), but I don’t think I’ve quite purged myself of the fascination with this story, the kind of knife under the skin fascination that is only cured by writing.
“This door you might not open, and you did;
So enter now, and see for what slight thing
You are betrayed…. Here is no treasure hid,
No cauldron, no clear crystal mirroring
The sought-for truth, no heads of women slain
For greed like yours, no writhings of distress,
But only what you see….”
Edna St. Vincent Millay, from “Sonnet VI (Bluebeard)”
Because the thing behind the door is always only what you see. Because someday I am going to write a Bluebeard story.
