Sara Eddy

Goldilocks

I wanted always for Goldilocks
and Baby Bear to be the best
of friends, for BB to find her
in his bed and see the essential
good in her–and for Goldilocks
to live cozy in the bear’s house,
where Papa Bear would make
another bed for her and Mama
Bear would make more porridge.
Because look at me, baby me
with my curly blond locks
and my big blue eyes, the world
always took care of me, the world
owed me a Bear friend and all
the porridge, and it always
saw my best intentions
and my deepest needs, even
when I broke into their house
and ate their food and broke
their furniture, they did not call
the police, who did not come
and suspect me of a terrible
history of crimes, and did not
accuse me on the basis of my skin,
and did not shoot me in the
livingroom of my friend Baby Bear’s
house, in front of his loving Mama and Papa.

Heavier

Maybe it’s a small box
heavier than you’d think.
It’s made of something
you don’t know what it is
but it could be wood
from a country you visited
as a teenager, wood
dark and rough.
If you were Pandora
what would be in it?
You’re not a teenager 
anymore; your grief is actual
now and piled high
with hospitals and funerals,
it is global and physical and
all real, all real and in the world.
What more could there be
in that box?

Sara Eddy

Sara Eddy is the author of two chapbooks of poetry, Tell the Bees (A3 Press, 2019) and Full Mouth (Finishing Line, 2020), along with a book of ekphrastic poetry written in collaboration with the photographer Dominique Thiebaut. She has published widely in literary journals: some of her poems have appeared recently in the Threepenny Review, the Baltimore Review, Poetica, and Abstract Mag. She holds a PhD in American Literature from Tufts University, where she studied with the poet Deborah Digges, and is the Assistant Director of the writing center at Smith College, in Northampton, Massachusetts. She lives in nearby Amherst with two teenagers, a black cat, and a white dog.