Prick of the Spindle: Poetry: Vincenz: Parsifal and the Evil Forest

© Cynthia Reeser, Femme Fatale

Parsifal and the Evil Forest
By Marc Vincenz

I had intended to write
this poem about Parsifal,
the same in Wagner’s opera.
I considered it would put
a little romance back into things—
knights, steeds, maidens, kings;

and then I was reading Charles Simic
over dinner, I’d cooked myself, for myself,
and I realised that if he’d written a poem
about Parsifal, he too would not have
written about the legend itself,

he would have likened the Wagnerian opera
to something akin to life on the docks in New York,
red dresses stolen from the backs of trucks,
making love behind a refrigerator
in his seedy apartment
with an old bowl of spaghetti tossing
through his and his lover’s hair.

Marc Vincenz was born in Hong Kong. His first novel, Animal Soul, is forthcoming by Shanghai Wen Hui in China. He is presently working on a non-fiction book on modern mysticism, and a collection of poetry, A Pocketful of Crickets. Currently based out of Iceland, he writes a column on the occult for The Reykjavik Grapevine. His poetry has appeared, or is forthcoming, in various journals and magazines including Shipwrights and Artocratic.