Persephone drags
her hands along the tunnel wall, casually
staining herself. Her milky skin
illuminates, announces her
among the dead, their skin vague, and grey.
Hades leads his conquest
to a black bed carved from rock
burnished for her arrival.
This is the part where he ravishes her
but watch him hesitate;
she is, after all, Zeus’ daughter.
The fruit gleams
on the nightstand, obvious,
dripping; its split jewels
wink conspiringly.
They fill an awkward minute
with furious small talk,
triangulated, apparent;
until she pulls a strategic
hairpin. Her released gloss
spills across the bedspread.
She picks and wiggles
out a seed, lays it on her tongue
wetly: blush on blush
and as she swallows
her limbs shiver, cooling into argentite—
Elsewhere rages Demeter,
winter cracking with the fury
of a mother whose daughter lies
in the bed of a boy
from the wrong side of the river
