Phoenix Rises From the Rape of Persephone

fire ash in
the underworld,
perfunctory in rhyme
and meter, Haides negligent,
oh the earth yawns,

roses and
crocuses rebel
of their daily opening,
thalassa's salt swells with
laughter, the sea belches the
monster's dark cloak cast from
his shoulders in fetid pneuma,

the omen
lit by flaming
torches, the tenth
enlightening dawn has
come, his trim-ankled victim
claimed in the rear of Zeus's
chariot,

the gift
of a snare
what a trick
did strong, Hermes
wiped the residue of
the disguise of a pomegranate
seed from her thighs, seminarian                 
gift of religious agriculture plowed
into with irreverence for god,

cleaving the                               
earth asunder,
he descended into
Haides, his evil schemings
dropped into gaia's depths,
 
and what's more,
the grief over a maiden
perishes with the corn, burning
the kernels, near it a circle of stones,
pentelic marble cleansing where the earth
gaped and then closed, old images -

the rowanberry
and sheldrake, that
old world duck, and where
the phoenix rises from the rape
of Persephone - macrocosmic suture
where she was deceived in that the flowers
she was being carried off by what were not violets,
but tainted narcissus.

Copyright Ms. Sage Sweetwater, firebrand lesbian novelist