Thumbelina

“Then all the flowers opened, and out of each
came a little lady or a tiny lord.”
                           —Hans Christian Anderson                  

Lean in. I’m low-grow, grotesque,
a migratory bride barely born of barley.
Every hag has stolen me for company,
made me a blind mole’s jewelry.
My star is crushed and come to bloom
in the span of an annual, errant
seed turned girlish weed.
From my wee post beneath
the toad man’s thumb, I’m dumb
to the world beyond my nutty float,
my walnut boat. If I had known
one swallow could take me away,
I’d have sooner wormed my way.
But I’m myopic, peon stock
scant charmed and height slighted.
There’s no measure of man
I look up to, just the sense
tomorrow will lord its flower over
me, a whisp where I need a yell,
buds swelled as I batten and hatch.  

Angela Vogel is the author of Fort Gorgeous, winner of The National Poetry Review Press Book Prize.  Her poems appear in Best New Poets, The Journal, Gulf Coast, Cimarron Review, Green Mountains Review, Southern Poetry Review, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. Awards include the Southeast Review Poetry Prize, Honorable Mention in the Tupelo Press Spring Poetry Project, a Maryland State poetry fellowship, and four Pushcart Prize nominations.