“This playful chapbook is full of invention–magic ATMs, girls with bloody heels, princesses who “lol” at balls, and wolves with evil glimmers in their eyes. The poems are musical and clever, at turns satirical and romantic. KB DeBeasi’s wit is on full display as she asks questions like “when people stop telling you / how pretty you are / why wouldn’t you turn / to mirrors / question everything?” A delightful read.”

Ezra Pound famously said, “Make it new!”  And that’s what KB DeBeasi has done with her evocative take on classic fairy tales. An inviting and visually seductive chapbook that I highly recommend.

What finer place could there be to deconstruct and subvert fairy tales–age-old tales of women’s lives and women’s work, that are so often themselves subversive–than on the fridge door, that contemporary and nourishing domestic space? In The Truth Walks Into a Fairy Tale, KB DeBeasi’s wit is spindle-sharp, and her vivid and layered approach to retellings deploys word-collage, acute marginalia, lyric insight and magnetic bite. There’s much to learn here, as the heroine in Donkey Skin discovers sometimes “making an ass of yourself/ is the only escape.” These poems are the keenest magic mirrors: look into them with care, and get ready to cackle and gasp, to find out what the truth asks.