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*The Marriage of Persephone*

I. hades

Pale little oval of a baby goddess-girl

I've been watching ripe globes of fruit

swing on that body of yours.

Girl, you're unsteady, heaped-up spheres

and though I can't see through it

I know that under your poured-cream dress

the fruit is rounded, red, and sweet.

II. night swimming

Persephone, on the brink of the stream,

removes her dressing gown. She tongues

the water, rubs it into the torn places

of her skin, and her toes

take the sand like roots.

her lover runs his hand down her,

unzips her back. he wonders

why there's blood

instead of juice on the mossy sheets

beside the Styx. He thinks, Perfect breasts.

Like pears. And I'm telling you,

you take one bite out of this woman

and you're stuck in her

forever.

III. summer on the farm

On the broad flat plains of Kansas

Demeter sweats, shuffles, bent double

with her hoe. In her wake are live things

boiling from the ground. A riot

of vegetables, cucumbers

tomatoes and sweetpeas all jostling

towards the sun. The vines writhe,

seething across the earth. The goddess

with the hoe squints backwards. Soon

she will take her knife, loosen the soil,

free them from the hollowed ground.

It will feel like giving birth.

Persephone, sullen, curled in a window seat,

stares glaze-eyed at the burgeoning garden

and craves pomegranates in the middle of July.