The Wolf’s Postscript to “Little Red Riding Hood”<\/b><\/p>\n
First, grant me my sense of history:
\nI did it for posterity,
\nfor kindergarten teachers
\nand a clear moral:
\nLittle girls shouldn’t wander off
\nin search of strange flowers,
\nand they mustn’t speak to strangers.<\/p>\n
And then grant me my generous sense of plot:
\nCouldn’t I have gobbled her up
\nright there in the jungle?
\nWhy did I ask her where her grandma lived?
\nAs if I, a forest-dweller,
\ndidn’t know of the cottage
\nunder the three oak trees
\nand the old woman lived there
\nall alone?
\nAs if I couldn’t have swallowed her years before?<\/p>\n
And you may call me the Big Bad Wolf,
\nnow my only reputation.
\nBut I was no child-molester
\nthough you’ll agree she was pretty.<\/p>\n
And the huntsman:
\nWas I sleeping while he snipped
\nmy thick black fur
\nand filled me with garbage and stones?
\nI ran with that weight and fell down,
\nsimply so children could laugh
\nat the noise of the stones
\ncutting through my belly,
\nat the garbage spilling out
\nwith a perfect sense of timing,
\njust when the tale
\nshould have come to an end.<\/p>\n
— Agha Shahid Ali<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Wolf’s Postscript to “Little Red Riding Hood” First, grant me my sense of history: I did it for posterity, for kindergarten teachers and a clear moral: Little girls shouldn’t wander off in search of strange flowers, and they mustn’t speak to strangers. And then grant me my generous sense of plot: Couldn’t I have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whatever"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12523"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12523\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12585,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12523\/revisions\/12585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}