Response Poem 3: On Agha Shahid Ali's 'The Wolf's Postscript to "Little Red Riding Hood". - Aliza Bakht

Last Pig Standing

First, let me introduce myself.

I don’t think that you remember

Once upon a time, there were three little pigs.

Maybe a flash of recollection?

Not that I care. Anyway.

There were three of us and I

Was the youngest of the lot.

My older brother was a gambler

Lost all his money paying off his debt

But he did pay it off.

And thus, lived in a house made of straws

He was too broke to afford anything else.

My second brother was an artist

A good man and a sensitive soul.

He preferred simplicity in living

So, he lived in a lovely wooden house

And I spent my childhood there.

I’ve always been a working-class pig

I wake up, work and sleep.

And I lived in a cemented house.

My brothers argued with me to leave

Not because of some superiority-complex

They’d tell me to leave because

I was depressed as fuck living there.

Now I’d paint the wolf as a villain

He did kill my brothers after all

But as far as I’ve observed

Immense misery often turns even

A good man into a monster.

Red’s daddy now owns a timber industry

The local hero girl became a brat

And the Big Bad Wolf?

Tortured, shamed and thrown away

With nothing but bricks inside his belly.

He’d lost his mind by the time he

Even got here to begin with.

We’d not seen or expected violence like that

He killed himself shortly after killing everyone else

And now I live alone in my cement house.