In celebration of Tim Burton’s new Alice movie:
Alice in Darkness
Forget tears. Chasing
white animals with timepieces
in this drug-trip landscape
can only lead to more of same.
Hedgehogs, playing cards, paintbrushes:
full of undisclosed danger.
Didn’t your mother tell you
not to kiss strangers?
That Cheshire smile shouldn’t fool you.
Pull your skirt down.
Your nails are growing so fast
you’re hardly human.
Alice, fight your version of Bedlam
as long as you can.
Sleep the sweet dream away
from that gooey looking glass, or mushrooms,
or the fear of your own body.
Forget what the night tastes like.
Stop wondering through the shadows,
holding your neck out
for the slice of the axe.
Verdict: Liked. Definitely a movie you’d enjoy more on the big screen. Surprisingly, I also liked the SyFy channel’s more modest version of Alice as well – both were versions of the story where a more empowered grown-up Alice re-enters Wonderland to become a hero. Burton’s was a more straight-forward Joseph Campbell “Hero(ine)’s Journey” while the SyFy version dealt more with political intrigue.
Jeannine Hall Gailey served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington and the author of Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, and winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize and SFPA’s Elgin Award, Field Guide to the End of the World. Her latest, Flare, Corona from BOA Editions, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. She’s also the author of PR for Poets, a Guidebook to Publicity and Marketing. Her work has been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poetry, and JAMA.
Marie
I haven’t seen a movie at a proper theater in years (though come summer we usually make it to the drive-in at least once — very kid-friendly, drive-ins), and I don’t expect that’ll change anytime soon. But we did rent the SyFy “Alice” this weekend, and, to my surprise, I LOVED it. Inventive, funny, and, um, Andrew Lee Potts=awesome. “Finally!”