Literature / Poisoned Apples: Poems for You, My Pretty

Go on, venture into the forest...but make sure you know the way out.

The action’s always there.
Where are the fairy tales about gym class
or the doctor’s office or the back of the bus
where bad things also happen?
Pigs can buy cheap building materials
just as easily in the suburbs.
Wolves stage invasions. Girls spit out
cereal, break chairs, and curl beneath
covers like pill bugs or selfish grannies
avoiding the mess.
No need for a bunch of trees.
You can lose your way anywhere.

Poisoned Apples: Poems for You, My Pretty is a 2014 poetry anthology by Christine Heppermann that mixes Fairytale Motifs with the hardships of a modern teenage girl's life. Anorexia, toxic friendships, popularity, body image issues, and oversexualization are the primary themes of the book.

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Poisoned Apples provides examples of:

• Alcoholic Parent: In "The Giant's Daughter at Spring Formal", the giant's daughter has to throw away her father's empty alcohol bottles so her mother won't find them.
• Biblical Motifs: "The First Anorexic" uses Eve biting into the apple as a metaphor for the beginnings of anorexia.
• Bubbly Waitress: In the poem "What She Heard the Waitress Say", a girl with body image issues imagines a thin, pretty waitress cheerfully making fun of her weight and asking if she needs a forklift to get her out of the booth.
• Foul Cafeteria Food: In "Human Centipede One", the cafeteria burgers are drenched in "suspicious fluid."
• Gone Horribly Right: "Thumbelina's Get-Tiny Cleanse—Tested", Miss Muffet tries a new diet to lose weight consisting of pine needles, mist and acorn caps. She loses so much weight and becomes so tiny that she gets wrapped up and eaten by the spider.
• Height Angst: In "The Giant's Daughter at Spring Formal", the giant's daughter laments that the other girls are smaller and more conventionally beautiful, and that Jack only went out with her because his friends dared him to.
• I Coulda Been a Contender!: In "Blow Your House In", the basketball-playing girl gives up her favorite sport and her position on the team when she becomes obsessed with losing weight.
• In with the In Crowd: In "Life Among the Swans", becoming the swan from The Ugly Duckling is used as a metaphor for becoming beautiful and popular. No one teases the swans, but the newest swan doesn't have much in common with her new "friends" and secretly wants her old life back.
• Long List: "You Go, Girl!" is a long poem listing all the undesirable beauty flaws that make a girl look ugly, ending with an offer to buy a $40 cream that might fix them up...might being the operative word.
• Micro Dieting:
  • In "Thumbelina’s Get-Tiny Cleanse—Tested", Miss Muffet tries a diet consisting of rose petals, pine needles, dew, mist, and dandelion fluff. She shrinks so small that she gets wrapped up and eaten by a spider.
  • In "Blow Your House In", a female basketball player becomes obsessed with her weight, quits the sport and starts developing anorexia.
    At lunch she swirled a teeny spoon in yogurt
    that never touched her lips and said
    she’d decided to quit chasing a stupid ball.
• Prince Charmless: In "Prince Charming", the narrator's date flatters her mom, dad, and sister, and then the first thing he says when they're in the car together is, "Girl, you look amazing. That sweater makes your boobs look way bigger."
• Rise of Zitboy: In "Vindictive Punctuation", the narrator is so insecure and torn up about her acne that she stays home on the night of the homecoming dance. She compares herself to her friend Sheila, who has flawless skin and happily goes to the dance with her boyfriend Jeff.
• Self-Harm: In "Spotless", the narrator draws seven lines on her leg with a razor, "deep as the silence of my days, as straight as the path I ran from the huntsman, as red as those three drops for which my mother named me."
• Self-Serving Memory: In "What She Heard the Waitress Say", a girl with body image issues imagines a thin, pretty waitress making fun of her weight and asking if she needs a forklift to get her out of the booth.
• Shout-Out:
  • "Human Centipede One" mentions the first and second movies.
  • In "Boy Toy Villanelle", G.I. Joe and Spider-Man are mentioned as examples of stereotypical boys' toys, with Princess Cadence from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic as a stereotypical girls' toy.
• Unusual Euphemism: "Retrieving my golden ball" appears as a euphemism for sex in "Transformation".
• Weight Woe: Anorexia and body image issues are recurring theme in about half of the poems, including "The Never-ending Story", "Blow Your House In", "Going Under", "The Anorexic Eats a Salad", and "Thumbelina's Get-Tiny Cleanse—Tested". In "The Never-Ending Story", the narrator's parents want her to get better from her anorexia and are clearly horrified by it. It does not help that their younger daughter is being influenced by her sister, pretending that her dolls have feeding tubes.
  Once there was a girl whose father held her tight
  to stop her from doing crunches.
  Once there was a girl whose mother's dreams
  all became nightmares.
• With Friends Like These...:
  • In "BFF", the narrator's best friend Jill goes out with her crush, tells him her embarrassing secret, and passive-aggressively Stealth Insults her weight and looks.
  • In "Vindictive Punctuation", Sheila doesn't seem to care very much that her friend feels insecure about her looks, and leaves her behind to go to the homecoming dance with her boyfriend.