Zeus Negotiates with Hades
Or
Persephone, Silenced
So let’s say she eats it –
seeds and all –
this wet and red fruit
of the dead – and consents
for a moment
to wear your rotting crown.
What then, when oceans
are born of her grief?
Persephone is nothing
to you without charm,
and all those bodies
floating in the salt
of her tears – that won’t do
The wailings of the dead
are enough. Would you add
her sorrow to the din?
So why don’t we split her, hm?
In the months of her mother’s wrath,
the humans will know hunger, sure,
but they’ve grown fat anyway.
While she picks Daffodils in May,
bronzing in the season of life –
you’ll recall why the dead
make such poor company –
will learn to miss
the way she only smiles
with half of her teeth –
come Autumn, how warm
her strange willingness
will seem – how blessed
the way she forgets
you tore a mouth
of Earth, reached withered
hands across the breach
and made of her an unwilling
Monarch: part-time queen
of the always dead
Max Orr teaches English in Columbus. His work examines the interactions between the self and the natural world, inside environments, and loved ones. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Pudding Magazine, Maudlin House, and The Mantle.