Six Seeds of Separation
poem by Joy Yourcenar / line drawings by Eric Boutilier-Brown
| Myths never finish the story. |
| Giddy Persephone, dancing ambiguously through Olympian meadows right up to the edge of womanhood, desired Hades tentatively in her thoughtless, childish way. |
| Little girls ripen like corn into goddesses, and become summer heavy. Swaying before Cerberus' master, half begging, half afraid. Demeter's wayward daughter flirts with raw passion; Persephone plays a breathless game, captive and captivating, nubile and mutable, taunting the Lord of Hell with her budding breasts, nipples like blossoms, caressed by carelessly woven daisy chains. Onto her pomegranate stained mouth Hades whispers love and the grown up secrets she craves but cannot fully comprehend. |
Pendulous breasts heaving,
Demeter, left alone in her despair,
draws back fertility into her womb,
clinging to it like a stillborn child.
Fully ripened and oft harvested,
she understands too well
the double entendre
of plowing and planting,
the excruciating pleasure
of godflesh on godflesh.
Her primordial maternal heart
was not prepared
for the sudden adolescent fecundity,
the precocious bloom of rampant sexuality
on Persephone's roseblushed childcheeks.
Zeus spared her the sight
of braids taken down and unplaited
in preparation for the bridal bed
and hymen's exquisite sacrifice.
But whose loss of innocence
does she mourn
in a wild extravagant grief,
splashy as red poppies
in a verdant field?
Demeter regains only partial
vibrancy |
Myths always end
without telling you
the entire story.
