I am so loving this new play on Hansel & Gretl’s witch. I’m also feeling incredibly lucky that we could snag it for The Plot before another favorite journal snatched it for themselves.
BINGE EATING WITCH by Ellie Slaughter
Nibble, nibble, gnaw,
who is nibbling at my little house?
The house, a sagging thing,
a butter melted cinnamon tart.
Peppermint pigs
scrape cocoa mud,
begged for pies crustless,
corn-filled.
Her whole life: unsmiling empty
calorie lunch, creamsickle clouds,
the whir of an electronic wheelchair
between couch, computer,
open mess
of popcorn cushions, filled
murmurs of generator tick, house
fragile as an empty stomach.
Dismantle the house post-bypass,
and replace the desserted walls with
preservative-free
celery stalk foundation,
low-sodium chicken broth baths.
The furniture is now made of white meat,
the carpet of broccoli florets; a treadmill,
part coat rack, built of bone, waits.
As her body wilts, so does the freshness
of the new structure; I know why
the fat lady sings.
Ellie Slaughter is the author of the chapbook VIOLET (2015; available on Amazon), won the Roy F. Powell Creative Writing Award in Poetry (2011), and has been published in Anthropoid, NonBinary Review, and The Miscellany, as well as elsewhere. She is an MFA student at Lesley University and currently works as the prose editor for Sling Magazine while interning at VIDA: Women in Literary Arts. In May 2015, she participated in Tupelo Press’s 30/30 project. Currently she lives in Salem, MA with her daughter.
