Why the Naughty Boys, by Robin Michel

The Return of Persephone, by Frederic Leighton (England) 1891

​Why the Naughty Boys
 
Persephone’s lovely bare foot slips on the red rock and she finds herself tumbling 
through a chasm opening up below--
 
Oh, why is it always the naughty boys who draws us with their heat, she thinks.
 
A flurry of flower petals follow her descent; like leaving a bread crumb trail back home. 
Above the ground, she hears her mother Demeter calling her name, 
 
           Per-per-per--
 
                             seph-seph-seph--
 
                                           onee-onee-oneeee--
 
Each syllable reverberates in the far-away sky like a flock of birds sent—and failing--
to save her. 
 
After the earth’s hellish fissure, what opens next?
 
Her heart splitting in two like the seeded pomegranate he forces upon her, 
or her thighs reluctantly welcoming a god who doesn’t understand the word no?  
 
Six months is not forever, she tells herself, less time than it takes to fully bake a baby.
More time than it takes to conceive, but she shrugs away that thought.
 
She and her husband reach a compromise: annual visits to her mother are allowed, 
as long as he gets to stay below. Her mother waits.

Robin Michel
​
Robin Michel is the author of the full-length poetry collection Beneath a Strawberry Night Sky (Raven & Wren Press 2023) and is the winner of the  Jessie Bryce Niles Poetry Chapbook Contest for Things Will be Better in Bountiful (Comstock Review 2024). Her poetry appears in many print and online journals, including Unbroken Journal, Gordon Square Review, and Passionfruit Poetry. Robin served as a fine arts program coordinator and / or docent in public schools for over fourteen years.