un/re naming Persephone
Delicate and virile,
she wound flowers into her hair in the morning
and grew drowsy with the rush of dusk.
Her gentle hands, accustomed to working
but showing no wear, fluttered through
grass and pines in the dawn of the valley
lit by a golden sun which yet bore no anguish
and shone on no human flaw.
She felandered with ferns,
her bashful gaze
simple as ignorance
calm as trust.
The ferns, enchanted
encircled her thighs
in their broad pliant leaves
and worried their puckers of
bright pollen into her flesh
until the dear tickled girl
squirmed and leapt
in mild amusement.
At last she would
peel them from her
and drop them
limp and moist
onto the peat below
where they would be fertilized
and consumed.
She traced the rows of rounded pocks
they left in her skin,
knowing no lust
no maleness,
tactile for tactility’s sake.
A daughter born from lightning and grain,
watched guardedly by her mother as she pranced
colt-like through the phases of adolescence.
It was always too late, too early for goddesses to reign
over time-crusted hillsides. Every milk-water clover said it was so.
The plants who dappled the green and sang in the wind
foretold of narcissus snapped from its roots
and the sudden sound of wrenched-earth and hellfire.
Her maiden’s body
was battered by the hot golden flank
of Hades’ Chariot
when the member of the dark
could resist her no longer.
Rush of dusk
Demeter’s daughter undone.
Acidic nip of plum
at her throat
Sudden woman
in rapid descent
simple as horror
calm as a tremor.
The roar of five thousand horses
and triumph over flesh.
Nature fell into winter
in a crystalline moment
as he uprooted Persephone
by her ripped articles.
Hades took no wife
before this shame.
No devil’s falsetto
could lure lost souls
across the liquid chasm of mortality.
“Persephone” called children of the Sun as the
name drew closed–her throat–
“Persephone” resonated in rabbit dens
rattled empty branches. “Persephone”
a girl’s name which inspired no doubt,
no sincerity. “Persephone” a girl’s name fails to
Inspire. “Persephone” meter of Demeter and stroke
of Zeus. “Persephone” “Persephone” “Persephone”.
Demeter’s dismay
at her daughter, defiant shepherd
of flocks across the River Styx:
souls weak with cold, soggy with forgetfulness.
The devil’s fruit was bitter, tart,
and still she ate for sustenance sake.
Her body thickened
with the might of swallowing
and the might of treading the path
to the river this endless night.
Her bare feet became
patinaed, hooflike
and would not bleed
with indented stones.
A creature of purpose,
she spoke little
and bore no Hades children.
The dead will not ripen and arid goddesses
bear no hapless goods.
The Queen of the Dead
will neither blink nor smile
at any but her flock,
simple as loneliness
calm as possession.