Tag: persephone

ecc-poetry:

Dating Advice from Persephone to Eurydice,
on an Orpheus Who Won’t Stop Chasing

summer

Invest in running shoes. This is the best way I know to deal with love.
Of course, sometimes that won’t work: Some boys believe the further you flee,
the nobler they are for chasing you; some boys are magicians
balloon twisting words until no turns into just another turnon.
In this case, find a snake and become her apprentice; let her sink
venom in you until the ground opens up to make you a ghost.
Leave that man you don’t want clutching vapor. Presto, change-o.

fall

Don’t relax:  While you’re rotting away, he’s up there grieving stylishly.
Everyone is sorry for him, calling you stupid, giving him directions
to the underworld. They say death cannot stop true love;
this is another way of saying that your body will never grow cold
enough to stop him from wanting it.

winter

I’m the queen of the dead, which sounds impressive: all that obsidian.
But my mother is goddess of growing things, rice paddy mud and smooth squash.
When my husband pulled me into the earth, she withered the whole world
to ransom me and it was still only almost enough; I’d tasted six of his
seeds and was deemed damaged goods. That’s laws for you.
Playing bedroom games can make it better; for instance, sometimes
I pretend to be a sunken ship. Hull coated with soft sea-moss
and plumed coral. I think of the cold currents, and rust, all the
ocean things that could make me their home in perfect quiet–

I never manage to sink all the way before his voice resurrects me again.

spring

When you grow back, you may not look the way you used to.
You may have scales, or birch-bark, or dripping fangs.
These things only mean you’ve survived, but people will see them
as proof of your ruin. My mother is disappointed in me:
We sit in silence sometimes, her staring into my hollowed opal eyes
until finally she says, “You used to be so happy. You’re not the little girl
I thought I was saving.” Let them call us monsters;
beauty has never been as crucial as resilience.  
It’s springtime, girl; not for good, but for now,
and we are both perennial.

– e.c.c.