CARL GRIMM: A FAIRY TALE
by Marie C. Lecrivain
A boy with promise, their parents said,
the one whose name damned
the brothers’ every waking moment,
the could have been that never was.
He’d have carried on the family business,
and added another veneer of respect
to a name that inspires distance
in the speaking. Their brother could’ve
been a contender, a man of letters,
of justice meted out in middle-class fashion,
a man who knew his way among other men
of his ilk, and would’ve walked the path
of bourgeois princes until it was time
to pass the mantle to his first-born namesake.
To Jake and Will, he was a shadow that grew
darker and longer through the years,
even after they laid their parents to rest.
He was the monster, a wastrel,
and bully who never let them forget
their place in the family caste,
until he became a part of every story
told by younger children among
themselves, Watch out for the eldest.
Watch - and bide your time.
the one whose name damned
the brothers’ every waking moment,
the could have been that never was.
He’d have carried on the family business,
and added another veneer of respect
to a name that inspires distance
in the speaking. Their brother could’ve
been a contender, a man of letters,
of justice meted out in middle-class fashion,
a man who knew his way among other men
of his ilk, and would’ve walked the path
of bourgeois princes until it was time
to pass the mantle to his first-born namesake.
To Jake and Will, he was a shadow that grew
darker and longer through the years,
even after they laid their parents to rest.
He was the monster, a wastrel,
and bully who never let them forget
their place in the family caste,
until he became a part of every story
told by younger children among
themselves, Watch out for the eldest.
Watch - and bide your time.
Marie C Lecrivain is the executive editor/publisher of poeticdiversity: the litzine of Los Angeles, a Pushcart Prize nominee, photographer, and is a writer-in-residence at her apartment. Her prose and poetry have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, including: Edgar Allen Poetry Journal, The Los Angeles Review, Nonbinary Review, The Poetry Salzburg Review, Red Fez, Spillway, Orbis, and others. She's the author of several volumes of poetry and fiction, including Philemon's Gambit (© 2016 International Word Bank Press), which is available on Amazon.com.
