Beneath a Red Hood (Revision 2.1)

[Lizzie]

Hi, Todd. I've never read Lolita, so I'm working the Little Red Riding Hood angle here. I feel like the pedo element is self-evident. One of the strengths that I see in this piece is that it can be read from many angles and still make sense.

Revision 1.1

Hunger is a breathless dance 
of teeth—the smell of rusted iron—
I stink of it. -- honestly, I have no idea what the significance of rusted iron is, but I like it anyway. It makes me think of something falling into disuse, the speaker has been idle too long. I also like the idea that one can start to smell of desire, and this person's desire smells bad.

Also, the punctuation is not right. Em dashes are like parentheses, so the core sentence you have is:
Hunger is a breathless dance of teeth I stink of it.
You could do: Hunger is a breathless dance of teeth; the smell of rusted iron, I stink of it. I love the way the dashes look, I have a love affair with the em's, but...correctness and all that.

My ears prick -- Mr. Big Bad himself, he's a real prick. I like the wordplay of that, the ears and the character reference combined.
to the sanguine skip, her hum -- prick/skip =
a mouthful of bees. -- interesting combination of the danger of bees and the potential sweet of honey -- is it dangerous for him to pursue her? Do wolves try to get at beehives?

She is sweet cherries -- you can do more with the verb than "is." Bees/sweet cherries is nice sonics again.
on the tongue that licks
against the gnarled root. -- do you need "the"? Maybe gnarled roots? Or is it the roots of the cherry tree or the tree that the bees are in? Then maybe "the gnarled roots." Is it her tongue that licks or the speaker (or someone else)? I guess what I'm saying is that there's a good deal of ambiguity in here that could be easily sorted.

Slick droplet, -- this one I don't get, which is ok. It still sounds great.
bag of raw meat, -- nice, the girl as object, as the cure for craving
not so little girl, -- like this too, establishes age around the tween years, I'm thinking

hair, a thorny tangle -- thorny tangle is gorgeous. I don't know why "hair" is danging there as a separate description. I'd remove the comma.
of waves beneath the blood
moon. -- Ok, my objection to this sentence, beginning in the last strophe, is that it's not a complete sentence. I'm a stickler. You can remedy by "(her) hair (insert verb here) a thorny tangle...."

Who could see
and claim her 
an ingénue?  -- Ickyness of speaker coming out. The italics make me think that the speaker is more directly addressing the audience here than anywhere else.

liquid desire -- I also don't understand the lack of capitalization here.
in pale naked -- comma after pale
light, dribbling wine, -- I don't think "wine" works. It's too adult.


no longer hooded, -- this is what really tipped me off to the Little Red Riding Hood angle. Also makes me think of budding femininity, showing a bit of cleavage as it were.
her breath, a rasping 
whetstone against -- don't understand "rasping whetstone"
my sharp angles. -- no verb in this sentence either, beginning with liquid desire through angles. It almost seems like two sentences are merged, both with no verb. The desire no longer hooded, and then the breath being the rasping whetstone. I know that some writers play fast and loose with sentence structure, but I don't see you typically writing that way -- you're usually precise, so it stands out.

Generations will fill 
my stomach— -- maybe the children she could have had if he hadn't eaten her, or the foreboding that he'll kill and kill again.

so big, so big. -- big is not that oomphy of a word, but it does tie in with the Big Bad Wolf thing, so it's probably a good choice.

Not much action in the title, but I'm one to talk. I just know that you're better with titles than I am, so maybe think about how you could work more meanings in there.

I think the conceit is brilliant. Bringing literary elements together and then subverting them is exciting.

It's a great piece. I'm jelly.