Poisoned Apples
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Dedication
[dedication tk]
Contents
Cover
Disclaimer
Title
Dedication
The Woods
The Never-ending Story
The Wicked Queen’s Legacy
Abercrombie Dressing Room
Sleeping Beauty’s Wedding Day
Photoshopped Poem
Prince Charming
A Brief History of Feminism
Suburban Legends
The First Anorexic
A SHAPE MAGAZINE Fairy Tale
Retelling
BFF
Blow Your House In
“Mannequins Make Me Feel Like a Failure.” —Claudia, age 13
If Tampons Were for Guys
The Giant’s Daughter at Spring Formal
The Anorexic Eats a Salad
A Witch’s Disenchantment
“Sweet Nothings”
Weight Watchers
To My Sheep, Wherever You Are
First Semester Haiku
Vindictive Punctuation
The Elves and the Anorexic
Runaway
You Go, Girl!
Thumbelina’s Get-Tiny Cleanse—Tested
The Little Mermaid
Health Class
Ugly Stepsister
Transformation
Boy Toy Villanelle
Rapunzel
Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board
Nature Lesson
Red-handed
Finders, Keepers
Gingerbread
What She Heard the Waitress Say
Going Under
Life Among the Swans
Big Bad Spa Treatment
Human Centipede Two
Spotless
The Beast
Bird Girl
Assassin
View from the Balcony
Pink Champagne
Acknowledgements
Index of First Lines
Index of Photographs
About the Author
Author’s Note
Praise
Copyright
About the Publisher
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POISONED
APPLES
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The Woods
The action’s always there.
Where are the fairy tales about gym class
or the doctor’s office or the back of the bus
where bad things also happen?
Pigs can buy cheap building materials
just as easily in the suburbs.
Wolves stage invasions. Girls spit out
cereal, break chairs, and curl beneath
covers like pill bugs or selfish grannies
avoiding the mess.
No need for a bunch of trees.
You can lose your way anywhere.
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The Never-ending Story
Once there was a girl who wore her bones outside of her body.
Once there was a girl who thought bones looked nice.
Once there was a girl who had limbs as blue as razors.
Once there was a girl who sat by a pool in August
wrapped in a quilt.
Once there was a girl who even after she became a beast,
soft fur blanketing her cheeks, belly, and back,
still shaved her legs.
Once there was a girl who peeled grapes, who picked at salads,
who piled leaves on top of the cheese.
Once there was a girl who dared not swallow anything but air,
so she hid her saliva in plastic bags beneath her bed.
Once there was a girl who wrote “BLOATED WHALE”
inside the pocket of her skinny jeans.
Once there was a girl whose little sister pretended
all the dollies had feeding tubes.
Once there was a girl whose father held her tight
to stop her from doing crunches.
Once there was a girl whose mother’s dreams
all became nightmares.
Once there was a girl who longed to be brave
enough to stick her finger down her throat,
to measure herself by the teaspoon,
to shrink to the size of a serving.
Once there was a girl who lay still for the doctor.
Once there was a girl whose favorite nurse called her Sugar.
Once there was a girl whose heart burrowed deep in the hollow of her chest
and went to sleep.
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The Wicked Queen’s Legacy
It used to be just the one,
but now all mirrors chatter.
In fact, every reflective surface has opinions
on the shape of my nose, the size
of my chest, the hair I wash and brush
until it’s so shiny I can see myself
scribbling notes as each strand
recommends improvements.
I make sure to write them all down
when all I really want is to stop
at the market and flirt with the butcher,
ignoring his critical knives,
haggling, for once, over the cost of
some other poor creature’s thighs.
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Abercrombie
Dressing Room
Now you believe the rumor
that they spray the clothes with perfume
every few hours because,
within these hothouse walls,
everything stinks—
the drooping skirts,
the wilted jeans,
the fading dresses losing petals,
tank tops fighting for air,
barely
hanging
on,
all so alive until
you picked them.
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Sleeping Beauty’s
Wedding Day
After the kiss and the trip to the castle comes the
showering, shaving, shampooing, conditioning, detangling, trimming,
moussing, blow-drying, brushing, curling, de-frizzing, extending, texturizing,
waxing, exfoliating, moisturizing, tanning, medicating, plucking, concealing, smoothing,
bronzing, lash lengthening, plumping, polishing, glossing, deodorizing, perfuming,
reducing, cinching, controlling, padding, accessorizing, visualizing, meditating,
powdering, primping, luminizing, correcting, re-curling, re-glossing, and spraying.
No wonder that hundred-year nap
just doesn’t seem long enough.
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Photoshopped Poem
Some say the Before poem
had character.
This poem is much more attractive.
With the Healing Brush Tool
I took out most of the lines.
I left in a few
so it wouldn’t look unnatural.
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Prince Charming
First thing through the door, Jed compliments
Mom’s new haircut.
He listens to Dad go off.
“Guess we’ll have to wait for baseball, Jed,
to win back Husky pride.”
He brings state quarters for my sister’s
lame collection. She shrieks like they are
diamonds.
Finally he guides me down
the slippery driveway to his car,
engine running, heat on high
so I won’t be cold. He says, “Girl,
you look amazing. That sweater
makes your boobs look
way bigger.”
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A Brief History
of Feminism
Simon says touch your toes.
Simon says turn around.
Simon says touch your toes again.
Now wiggle a little.
Simon says he is not a pervert.
Simon says hop on one foot.
Simon didn’t say stop hopping!
Hop closer.
Simon says hop closer.
Simon says is that a push-up bra?
Geez, honey, calm down.
Simon says calm down.
On second thought,
Simon says you’re pretty cute
when you’re all worked up like that.
Wanna hop your sweet self into my office
and see my sofa bed?
Simon says, we were just playing, Officer.
Simon, anything you say
can be used against you in a court of law.
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Suburban Legends
Even though we don’t really believe
all the crap about pale men and women,
their mouths wide as nightmares, lurching out
from the sinister trees, a trip to look for
the albino farm is as good an excuse as any
to get in that car and continue the story
of Terri, who draws on eyeliner with red pen,
and Karen deliberately spilling her vodka and Sprite
so she can take off her shirt and wave it out the car window,
and me, stuck once again with the ugliest guy,
the one with the half-assed mustache and tragic skin.
Speeding away from Westroads Mall and the PG movie
we will never see, we own this Omaha night.
Terri passes a joint with the driver.
Karen screams when the wind or cold
hands hit her bra, and I pretend nothing
is worming beneath my miniskirt,
while, not far off, a phosphorescent boy
blinks pinkly across a bonfire and says,
“Are those people for real?”
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The First Anorexic
Even the bruises she loves,
those bites when her mouth,
expecting resistance, sinks to the core
where the hissing begins tempting her
to scrape the flesh from every ruddy strip.
She hurries to swallow
the seeds, the stem, the clinging leaves.
Now Eve can see beyond the garden.
Now she knows there is nothing but hunger.
Each meal will be a new sweet punishment.
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A SHAPE MAGAZINE
Fairy Tale
Once upon a time there was a girl who
had a good hair week! Seven cute looks
she could do at home, and their names were
Waves, Bob, Bun, Bangs, Braid, Sleek, and
Party-Ready Ponytail.
One day, while out walking in the woods
at a steady pace with short bursts of speed,
the girl met a wolf and told him, What big
smudge-free lashes you have!
The wolf said, The better to see you
fix common makeup blunders; erase
years in minutes! So the girl skipped
the loose powder, stuck to pastels, and
dabbed her lips with Spun Sugar
Plumping Gloss ($18), so delicious that
the wolf ate her up. The woodsman
rode by—torching three hundred calories
in just thirty minutes!—lifted his axe,
and shouted, Adios, belly flab!
It was a quick-and-easy workout.
The girl sprang from the wolf’s
killer middle to snag fall’s hottest
shoes and bags, and they all lived
happily
ever
ab-tastic.
Art TK
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Retelling
What the miller’s daughter should have said
from the start
or at any point down the line is,
no.
No, you can’t drag me to the king.
No, I can’t spin that room full of straw into gold.
No, not that room, either.
Or that one.
Quit asking.
No, I won’t give you my necklace.
No, I won’t give you my ring.
No, I can’t give you the child;
the child will never exist.
End of story.
Once upon a time
there was a miller’s daughter
who got a studio apartment,
took classes during the day,
waited tables at night,
and when customers asked
what’s in the gravy
on the rump roast sandwich,
it’s the best thing they’ve ever
tasted, she winked and said,
>
Guess.
Art TK
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BFF
Jill doesn’t want me to feel bad.
Jill says Dylan isn’t good enough for me.
Jill would let me borrow her green skirt,
but it’s new, and I might stretch it out.
Jill is glad her parents don’t force her
to buy hot lunch.
Jill knows a superchic way to do my hair
so it will hide my ginormous forehead.
Jill can teach me how to do my mascara
so my eyes look less squinty.
Jill can’t help it if Dylan asked her to the movie.
Jill won’t tell anyone
besides Dylan
about that time I peed my pants at Target.
Jill wishes I had made cheerleading, too,
but aren’t her pom-poms cute?
Jill is soooooo glad we’re BFFs because,
Like, who else could put up with you?
LOL!
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Blow Your House In
She used to be a house of bricks,
point guard on the JV team, walling out
defenders who could only huff and puff
and watch the layups roll in.
She traded for a house of sticks,
kindling in Converse high-tops and a red Adidas tent.
At lunch she swirled a teeny spoon in yogurt
that never touched her lips and said
she’d decided to quit chasing a stupid ball.