Jack and the beanstalk
but he lives with his wife, not his mother
and the wife gives him money to buy groceries
but he comes home with arms full of books
and she throws them out of the window
and they turn into trees
but not overnight
in fact it takes hundreds of years
for the pages and the covers
of the books to break down
into mulch and compost
and for saplings to sprout and grow,
by which time Jack has been long forgotten
but the kids of the folk who live in the house now
sometimes climb the trees
hang upside down from the branches
until the blood rushes to their heads
and their eyes almost burst from the pressure
Simon Alderwick currently lives in Oxford, UK. His poetry has appeared in Magma, Berlin Lit, Poetry Salzburg, Anthropocene, Frogmore Papers, Dreich, IS&T, and elsewhere. A pamphlet, ways to say we're not alone, is available through Broken Sleep Books.