Persephone’s Return

The roses which bow from a tabletop vase
Remain fake, and the woman searches
Her daughter’s face with the same foreboding
As when she left, detesting that cold smile,
All his. Untouched, the girl hums floating past her,
And she barely has the power to control herself,
Not ask how many bottles, and if he’s lying
About overtime at the plant, still
Seeing that dancer. The lawyer’s fought to end
Visitation, but it’s near impossible in this state.
So off the girl goes each Saturday to a man
So low he has a scar inked in his back
Of a woman going down on a thunderbolt,
No regard for boundaries. But the myth
That a child could feel so needy she’d snack
On the food of hell, well it fits here, snug
As the peeled rind of her jeans, and her father
While innocent of that, doesn’t give a damn
About her, just violating the woman
By remote control, even lost to the world
Her daughter still inside her, brutal
As the brutalized become, deflowered from the roots.
She doesn’t lust after men or fruit,
But satisfaction, simple and raw, the malicious joy
In dominating someone. She’s half his after all,
These her inscrutable depths, her inherited future,
Her nurse’s aide mother affectionate and loyal,
Such her principal flaws, and that she fell
For a jerk like him, let him tempt her, the myth
That there is one myth, one woman, one tragic scene,
When the partaking is constant, desire to hold,
To have, to govern, to break free, to understand…
There are over 600 seeds in a pomegranate,
Not enough to account for all the ways she gives
In to stupid want, the girl just one more.

                                                          —David Moolten