Baba Yaga

The monster learns she is the monster
in this poem. She is the crooked shadow
cleaving light in a room. She is the worst sort of magic.
Dead-end cautionary tale. Everybody wants the monster.
She is the wrong thing at the right time. Wicked altar to worship blame.
When the monster cries, the townspeople hear it as danger suffocating
their delicate safety. She must be killed. Crumbled into salted earth.
She is too good of a mirror. Hysterical memento mori.
The monster is expected. She is out of necessity.
If the hero ventures into the woods and discovers only their breath
ringing the trees, that doesn’t make for much of a story.

Simone Person is a Black queer femme and two-time Pink Door Writing Retreat fellow. She is the author of Dislocate, the prose winner of the 2017 Honeysuckle Press Chapbook Contest, and Smoke Girl, the poetry winner of the 2018 Diode Editions Chapbook Contest. Simone grew up in small Michigan towns and Toledo, Ohio. She can be found at simoneperson.com.