Persephone

Persephone

In a kingdom of glass cutters, she lives off breakage,
crack and fracture, her body a book slit open,
locusts leaking out, stinking of wishes.
Locked up in blue, she revels in smoke signals.
Children cry. She is the toxin, she thinks, the abscess.
One prick from her and salt rushes to the wound
like a bullet, stinging of electricity.

In the story where she kill the lion,
a dead white dove falls repeatedly from the sky,
and she cannot repair it. Only the story grows stronger.
Outside, a child’s blue sweater collects fall leaves,
while an army of daylight marches against the dusk.