This poem first appeared in the anthology Still You: Poems of Illness and Healing, edited by Joan Baranow, published by Wolf Ridge Press, 2020.
Persephone
Before I could push a button, the doors closed.
I went into free fall, but the cables caught.
When the doors opened, the hallway ran black
before me until I entered a tiny glass train
like Snow White’s coffin, where she was placed
on display after the apple. I glided to the verge
of a deep-blue lake, then plunged in. The seams
of my enclosure held tight. No water leaked in.
It dawned on me that I was going to die alone.
I worried about my mother, but stayed calm until
I fell asleep, dreamed of the lake’s source, silver
from the mines of Argentina. I prefer long, skinny
countries like the legs of stovepipe pants on tall,
slim men, like the one who greeted me with a bowl
of pomegranate seeds in one hand, uncut gemstones
in the other. Flowers don’t grow without sun.
I saw kindness in his dark eyes. Blue shadows fell
on my green paisley scarf as I drank the poisonous
lake water so I could forget the way my mother
holds little birds in her hands and all I’d left behind.
About this Poem: I wrote this poem in a class I took at Stockton University, co-taught by Stephen Dunn. As with all my poems, it was a collision of several things: a dream, a lifelong love of fairy tales and Greek/Roman mythology, some knowledge of chemistry, and other unknown things floating in my unconscious. For those not familiar with the Persephone story which I reinterpreted for this poem, there’s a summary here. Stephen’s favorite line from the poem was “I prefer long, skinny//countries like the legs of stovepipe pants on tall,/slim men.”
