Wonderland: A Girl in Three Parts, 2007

Wonderland: A Girl in Three Parts

I. Alice

All we know of England isn't worth your

Little finger.  If you let it

In, then let it in completely.

Cheshire is a good place where

Each thing you know, you know.  It isn't worth your

Pinky though.  Never.  Never, never, never.  Little

Life, you are the girl that swallowed the girl to know

Each good thing slowly.  In your dreams,

An old cat-stripe comes to you, fugitive,

Striped--a stripe can be striped--

And saying how it broke the cat.  You should

Never unstripe a stripe.  An unstriped stripe

Cannot be unstriped.  And a cat that is striped cannot

Ever be unstriped if it cannot be a cat.  Do or do not

Let it in.  Or do, and

If you let it in

Don't let it out unless you--or else

Don't let it in in the first place--when did they say that

Every good

Little girl

Loves her mother?

II. Pleasance

All's well, and Alice

Lives her whole life that could very well fit

Inside of a boat or a thimble.  There are no  

Cities here, only a land and a wonder or two--then

Every cat's as stray as found.  Would it

Please your mother to be  

Little here, a little inch?  No, 

Every photograph of her's a bore: 

A woman on a couch with teeth.

Shall we go, all hidden in the dark, you

And I then to be led on by the storm?

Never have I dreamt of you in a teacup, in a new

Coat of flowers, but I would like to.  By the water's

Edge, pledge to me awfully, that you will be this

Lone happiness of mine, the only fetch of blue

In a murky place of--a wonder at each inch--

Diaphonous things--chance and sea and oysters--

Dying not for you but dying--

Each one spent

Like a penny, willingly, the smoke of day

Lilting toward a crowded sky--angelical.

III. Liddell

And you could know a place

Like Alice's would never last.

Instead there is a serious land where you

Couldn't find a talking walrus

Even if you settled for a senator.

Please, anyway, they're much too busy.

Leave a pact along the trail with every

Evening.  Have your cake 

And meet it too as though it were

Some long lost uncle.

Auntie Jane has lost her mind and she will never

Need it back, because this place

Creates a thing so much more--

Even though you think it not as--necessary.

Little thing, a little thing

It was to be a little thing, and then they

Dropped you off before you even knew it.

Dear, deary, deary little thing,

Every day will come to you like a hatchet.

Lop it off.  The queen's great head.

Learn to love it and the smell of it.