Grimm Modernity by Jesika Brooks

“Herr Grimm,” said the professor,
staring down the side-burned, half-cocked smile;
a man who knows too much, a German in modern fairytale.
“Und Sie auch, Herr Grimm.”
The brothers snigger behind their cell phones.

“Greta ate too much Kinder chocolate.”
The hallways, awash with rumor, foiled tongues:
the Grimms listen, tap out the stories on tiny keyboards,
placate the rumor-mongers and beg for more.
“Häns fell apart at the Pfeffernüsse.”

Outside by the Currywurst cart, the Grimms hear,
“I thought her red hood was stylish, but it attracted ‘””
“Him.”
“That wolf.”
The two Turkish girls back-and-forth,
headscarves flashing red in the sun,
curry ketchup like blood on their take-away plates.

“The linguistic rule states,”
the brothers present in class, interrupted by whispers:
“They met at the Diskothek; he kissed her sleeping on the couch ‘””
“Her white face, her red lips: irresistible!”
“She seemed to like it.”
Rumors, rumors, fact.
Dredged from the Neon Forest, into the Innenstadt.

At the Döner stand, under the moon:
the Grimms eat and think and text.
A grinning man offers the lost lamb

       mit scharf.


 

BIO: Jesika Brooks is a recent grad with a fondness for fairy tales both new and old. She digs illustration, language change, and pop culture minutiae. A good pun is her Achilles’ heel.


IMAGE: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Berlin Street Scene, 1913