{"id":730,"date":"2010-07-02T14:27:46","date_gmt":"2010-07-02T14:27:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=730"},"modified":"2010-07-02T14:27:46","modified_gmt":"2010-07-02T14:27:46","slug":"kelly-kanayama-says-once-upon-a-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/kelly-kanayama-says-once-upon-a-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Kelly Kanayama says "once upon a time…""},"content":{"rendered":"


Once upon a time<\/span>


when you were eight, it was the Complete Brothers Grimm<\/span>
you turned to in lonely hours, that silver tome<\/span>
of grisly parables\u2014toes chopped off for vanity, eyes pecked out <\/span>
for evil or maybe lazy crow-culling\u2014the answer<\/span>
to questions you hadn\u2019t uncovered yet.  Like this one,<\/span>
The Robber Bridegroom<\/span>: girl meets man, falls<\/span>
over herself loving him, the oldest story until<\/span>
she walks the ash-path to his house.  Sees him drag<\/span>
another woman in, fill her with every color<\/span>
of wine, <\/span>which caused her heart to break<\/span> (the victim\u2019s,<\/span>
you thought, though the pronouns didn\u2019t tell); sees him<\/span>
strip the dead girl, dice and salt her.  In the end<\/span>
he\u2019s caught as always.  You could find the page<\/span>
by touch, predicting the knife, the fragmented flesh <\/span>
before the covers parted, <\/span>once upon a time<\/span>
or every week for a year. What you were looking for <\/span>
lay in the shredded brocade, the wine, the seasoned pieces<\/span>
of that stranger\u2019s body the same sand-white <\/span>
as your own; you never questioned this,<\/span>
just as you never asked how the bridegroom found<\/span>
his morsel on the side to begin with.  Now you listen<\/span>
firsthand to other women\u2019s stories of drink, bared skin, <\/span>
tears, not sifting the words for what shudders<\/span>
at their heart, swollen with soured pleasure, bursting.<\/span>



<\/font> * Kelly Kanayama<\/span> grew up in Honolulu
\nand lives in Norwich.  She is a writer, editor, English tutor and
\noccasional dance teacher.<\/font>

<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once upon a timewhen you were eight, it was the Complete Brothers Grimmyou turned to in lonely hours, that silver tomeof grisly parables\u2014toes chopped off for vanity, eyes pecked out for evil or maybe lazy crow-culling\u2014the answerto questions you hadn\u2019t uncovered yet.  Like this one,The Robber Bridegroom: girl meets man, fallsover herself loving him, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}