The Wolf’s Postcript to ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ by Agha Shahid Ali

Agha Shahid Ali

The Wolf’s Postcript to ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ by Agha Shahid Ali

T.

Feeling very ungainly today.

The Wolf’s Postcript to ‘Little Red Riding Hood’

Agha Shahid Ali

First, grant me my sense of history:

I did it for posterity,

for kindergarten teachers

and a clear moral:

Little girls shouldn’t wander off

in search of strange flowers,

and they mustn’t speak to strangers.

And then grant me my generous sense of plot:

Couldn’t I have gobbled her up

right there in the jungle?

Why did I ask her where her grandma lived?

As if I, a forest-dweller,

didn’t know of the cottage

under the three oak trees

and the old woman lived there

all alone?

As if I couldn’t have swallowed her years before?

And you may call me the Big Bad Wolf,

now my only reputation.

But I was no child-molester

though you’ll agree she was pretty.

And the huntsman:

Was I sleeping while he snipped

my thick black fur

and filled me with garbage and stones?

I ran with that weight and fell down,

simply so children could laugh

at the noise of the stones

cutting through my belly,

at the garbage spilling out

with a perfect sense of timing,

just when the tale

should have come to an end.

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poetry