Persephone’s Devotion to Her Mother

Between my goddess and me there’s a sisterella rivalry

She’s my Mother, she’s my Mary, my Eve, my Aphrodite

In a bushy Italian accent she asks, How do you spell daughter?

Son is simple, but daughter, too many foolish letters she announces

Like an ethnic humour mother in a Woody Allen movie

She’ll do anything for me, be anyone I need her to be

In the hope that maybe this time I won’t leave

And before I do, I remind her, I diarise it for her, I prepare it for her

But she suspires down into my other world

Obsessed with pimps, eternal cigarettes

Flick knives, sex box television

My bags packed, she bangles my arm, not tightly, not flimsy

And we long kiss in love, in affection, in salutation, in respect

And in my other world curled up with my other love

My other me stills sees her, my Demeter,* keeping vigil

Two lit candles, a lachrymal vase, an altar of 70s photos

Love slogans spray painted around a curved room

Osso Bucco on low heat cooking until my return

*In Greek mythology, Persephone’s mother