Nick Flynn © ryan mcginley 2019
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Sleeping Beauty
When Sleeping Beauty finds the spindle
& pricks her finger & falls into her hundred-
year sleep, everyone around her falls as
well—her handmaids, her grooms, the cooks.
Dogs collapse in the courtyard, horses fold
in on themselves in the hay . . . . I’d forgotten
all that. Even the fire returns to embers—
fire’s version of sleep. In some tellings all
this sleep is a blessing, a solution to grief—
no one will miss her because they will sleep
as long as she sleeps & they will wake
when she wakes, no one having felt
a thing. Is this what we want, to take
everyone with us, to leave no one behind?
To find a way not to feel all the days you
are not here? Some days I wish I could
sleep for a hundred years, other days
I wonder if I’ve ever really been awake.
In one version the curse is uttered by
a crone, in another by a fairy. The castle,
in both versions, as everyone falls &
almost at once, becomes overgrown—
wild roses, thick with thorns, surround its
walls, so thick they will tear the flesh of
anyone who dares come close. When I
tell you I’m a wounded animal this is what
I mean—I am the thorn & I am the spindle
& I am the curse. No one will remember
the years they felt nothing.
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Nick Flynn is a writer, playwright, and poet. His most recent books are This Is the Night Our House Will Catch Fire (2020), a hybrid memoir, and Stay: threads, collaborations, and conversations (2020), which documents twenty-five years of his collaborations with artists, filmmakers, and composers. He is also the author of five collections of poetry, including I Will Destroy You (2019). He has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Library of Congress, and is on the creative writing faculty at the University of Houston. His acclaimed memoir, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, was made into a film starring Robert DeNiro, and has been translated into fifteen languages.
["Sleeping Beauty" is from I Will Destroy You, Graywolf Press, 2019 ]
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Pablo Picasso, Le repos, 1932
There are also, as Nietzsche wrote, days and nights when dreams seem a lot more convincing and "real" than waking life. Thanks for the fine poem and beautiful well-chosen Picasso.
Posted by: David Lehman | August 22, 2021 at 01:07 PM
David: Glad you liked it.
Posted by: Terence Winch | August 22, 2021 at 01:56 PM
A group-sleep has its allure. But no one would get out of Afghanistan, no one would get vaccinated, no one would be ready for a hurricane. And yet, the beauty of it is breathtaking.
Posted by: Anne Harding Woodworth | August 22, 2021 at 02:11 PM
Oh how I wish I’d written this!!!!!!
Posted by: ClarindA | August 22, 2021 at 02:37 PM
The ache for oblivion is so deep and palpable here. It the curse to be awake or asleep and think we are awake. A mesmerizing poem.
Posted by: Jiwon Choi | August 22, 2021 at 03:41 PM
Amazing!
Wonderful Picasso!
Posted by: Susan Campbell | August 22, 2021 at 03:53 PM
Oh, I love this whole reverie about everyone "sleeping" as we are also unconscious. Great lines--"I am the thorn, I am the spindle & I am the curse." Wonderful rewrite of a powerful tale.
Posted by: Ann Bracken | August 22, 2021 at 04:03 PM
The power of the fairy tale in the hands of the poet. Outstanding.
Posted by: Beth Joselow | August 22, 2021 at 05:16 PM
what beth said
Posted by: lally | August 22, 2021 at 06:16 PM
Sleep is something I crave but not for a hundred years. This is a wonderful poem. I love it.
Posted by: Eileen | August 22, 2021 at 09:04 PM
I am a huge NICK FLYNN fan. He is cool while being classic.
I interviewed him years ago when he was a Witter Bynner Fellow at the LOC, and I thought at that time I'd follow his star's dust anywhere. And here it is.
Posted by: Grace Cavalieri | August 23, 2021 at 11:15 AM
I'm rapt (not asleep) with admiration & pleasure
Posted by: Elinor Nauen | August 23, 2021 at 04:02 PM
I find the language of this poem so simple, so direct, but the poem is so hard to understand. I think finally that the poet wants to induce sleep because it will lead to a great awakening, a rebirth of feeling -- or am I not awake enough to get the message?
Posted by: Peter Kearney | August 24, 2021 at 11:38 PM