Sequel to the 1997 version of Cinderella starring Brandy by Em Dial

This time, there is no pumpkin turned carriage, just Drella rolling up in my grandfather’s Cadillac

just the chassis expanding like a lung to the build of I Wanna Dance With Somebody sung live, of course. Whitney fairygodmothering the night from shotgun, windows down,

bouncing​ don’tcha wanna dance say you wanna dance​, off Drella’s cheek in the driver’s seat.
This time, the ball is my grandfather’s funeral. Everyone still stunts in their finest, but this time,

in his honor. Drella and I sit in the front pew. Whitney abracadavers his body back to life

for him to bellow one more ​How sweet it is! ​out the concavity of his chest. We bellow it back and everyone leaves with both their shoes and sheds evil or wicked from their names.

This time, the prince gets a backstory. Gets to flood the screen in Pacific. We learn how he sailed from an island into the dock of Whoopi’s arms. What it was to grow up a dumpling folded between

the hands of a Black Queen and her White Man. There’s this one scene where the prince kisses Whoopi and then Drella on the cheek and says “thank you” and we aren’t exactly sure what for.

And in this sequel, I’m the white and Black and Asian royal play cousin or friend of a friend or ensemble nobody or whatever. It doesn’t really matter all that matters is that there’s this one shot

in the middle of the film where my frame fills the left third of the screen and I’m looking up at Drella and Whitney as they sing the reprise to the song ​Impossible ​and maybe a rose petal falls

on my hair or maybe it is a piece of confetti or maybe I’m just standing there and my grandfather’s ghost is singing to Mona Lisa by Nat King Cole as the ghost of my Ama serves him roast duck or

maybe I’m just existing and so when Drella and Whitney get to the refrain, they look down and sing onto my cheeks, ​It’s possible, it’s possible,​ and I bloom into six mottled horses and no one says a word.

Em Dial (she/they) is a queer, triracial, chronically ill poet, educator, and earth-worker born and raised in the Bay Area of California. A 2020 Kundiman Fellow and recipient of the 2019 Mary C. Mohr Poetry Award, her work is also appears in Tinderbox Poetry Journal and Crab Creek Review.