A producer thinks, “fantasy inversions are in now;” sees 
how successful that one ogre was in 2001, 
how live-action remakes are dominating theaters, 
how the new Dungeons and Dragons 
is certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. 

So, he gets his friends to fund a small budget. 
One of them is an amateur make-up artist. 
This shouldn’t be too hard. 

“We have an ogre, now what does he want?” 
Everyone shakes their heads, overwhelmed 
by the story of the green guy, and all they can think of 
is, “to be left alone.” Then one woman says, 

“You know how the princess was cursed to be an ogre 
in that movie? What if we flip that around? What if 
our protagonist is a prince, and he finds his princess, 
only she’s an ogre cursed to be human?” 

The producer frowns. “Wouldn’t that just be 
a cliché fairy tale with a last-minute twist? 
Wouldn’t viewers find that…boring?” 

She bites her lip, then gasps. 
“What if she isn’t cursed?” 
Everyone squints at her. 
“Beauty and the Beast gender swap. 
He falls in love with the ogress — 

“our hero, like that other movie, and just as independent, 
but in this one, she doesn’t fall in love. She denies him and escapes. 
He is left alone in the woods to watch her fleeing back. 
Like Narcissus but with opposite intentions, 
he stays rooted to the spot where she spurned him. 
Some fairy godfather or other pitying spirit causes him 
to grow real roots deeper and stronger than the trees, 
because he doesn’t want to be moved 
from the place he last saw her face. He covers his own 
with his golden blonde hair, so that his eyes 
can see nothing else, preserving like a polaroid 
the last glimpse of her body. He becomes a dandelion! 
A dandy. Lion. 

“We see the passing of seasons and watch his flower 
become the seed head, and then the bristles take flight 
on the forest breeze, symbolizing all his thoughts of her. 
The seeds land in every one of her footsteps since she ran off. 
When you see a dandelion, the ogress has been near.” 

The others nod, liking the mythical twist. Yet, 
her idea makes a prettier tapestry than moving picture. 
Just like other B-movies, 
you can guess its Rotten score. 

This is, by far, my least favorite piece from National Poetry Month. It came about from the image prompt of the contest combined with the Writer’s Digest prompt “B-movie,” of all things. This was Day 2. About half-way through the month, I stopped trying to combine the prompts. I was getting all kinds of ideas from the image prompt alone, which was posted ahead of time. By the time the Writer’s Digest prompts were posted the morning of, they didn’t work. I felt limited, strangled, and also a bit miffed because some of the WD prompts were recycled from previous years. I read them and thought, “I just wrote this poem in November during the poetry version of Novel Writing Month.”

Anyway, due to the unique combination of prompts, I won silver for this one because it was “wildly creative.” I still don’t care for it much, and it likely will never appear in any publication of mine going forward. https://allpoetry.com/contest/2830725-National-Poetry-Month-April-2nd-noguest