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    The Red Door: A dark fairy tale told in poems
    The Red Door: A dark fairy tale told in poems
    The Red Door: A dark fairy tale told in poems
    Ebook95 pages29 minutes

    The Red Door: A dark fairy tale told in poems

    By Shawn C. Harris

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    About this ebook

    The story starts at a Jewish funeral.


    fist after fist fills with cool damp earth


    It travels to Israel:


    at ben-gurion airport
    here she comes hauling her baggage
    rendered clumsy by her burden
    beneath that smooth brown skin
    that halo of thick coarse hair
    the plantation and the shtetl
    live in blood and memory


    her passport names her
    tirzah persephone horowitz
    after an aunt on her dad’s side
    who died so young in the camps
    and her mother’s favorite greek myth
    but to call her tirzah is too much
    like uncovering her nakedness
    like speaking aloud the holy name


    and the holy city of Tzfat…


    i am a city of song
    plucked strings of a lyre
    loud brassy klezmer
    throbbing techno beats
    shoes clop-clopping on cobblestone
    tires screeching on the asphalt river
    winding round my peak


    It features monsters…


    terry loves monsters
    loved them since her first pimples and pubes
    sneaking dracula under the covers
    wondering what it would be like
    to feel a vampire’s fangs on her neck
    to taste human blood in her mouth
    to transform into wolf or bat or mist
    but dracula always dies
    staked and beheaded by good christian men
    because magic and mystery must not survive


    And it ends…


    No. That would be telling.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBen Yehuda Press
    Release dateSep 5, 2022
    ISBN9781963475173
    The Red Door: A dark fairy tale told in poems

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      Book preview

      The Red Door - Shawn C. Harris

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