Assistant Editor Lily Meyer: Elias Hutchinson’s “The Friar, as We Know Him,” introduces the reader to a contemporary version of Friar Tuck, as described by a speaker who surely belongs to Robin Hood’s band of thieves. In Hutchinson’s poem, as opposed to in traditional Robin Hood stories, the concept of redistribution of goods is only blurrily visible; somehow, it’s the speaker who seems vulnerable, and the Friar to whom power accrues. Hutchinson’s inversion of the old story is stealthy, but unmissable. In the poem’s world, which is, of course, our world, it’s the people swiping Game Boys from shipping containers who are struggling to survive.
To hear Elias read the poem, click below:
The Friar, as We Know Him
The Friar, as we know him, promotes his adjacency to our collection
of thieves—a person of God, he says—and we give him the
goods that fall out of shipping containers.
He spreads them around: televisions, Game Boys, KitchenAids (with
the pasta-arm attachments).
He is closer to the sun than Mercury.
Sometimes his sleeves ride up, revealing forearms as wide as
beaver tails, his dense locks of armhair, as he hands out Emeco
stools and Nike sneakers sizes six through ten.
Prince John has no idea what we’re doing.
He is love-swept in the south of Florida.
And the Sheriff of Nottingham is overwhelmed with his own
problems: a malignant knot in his stomach, an unmarried son.
Elias Hutchinson‘s work has appeared in The Threepenny Review, The Moth magazine, and Guesthouse. He lives in Saint Louis, Missouri.
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