Persephone watches Buffy the Vampire Slayer
I, too, have known the dark
chocolate thrill of a kiss against the wall
of a mausoleum. Our hunger pangs caused us
trouble — the semiotics of leather jackets,
animal prints. Night smudges the lines,
sexual and otherwise. I know how lonely it is
to grow beside a lover who remains dead
inside the narrative he chose.
You think I don’t watch
your movies? You always come back.
A departure and return in the fall, fresh
haircuts, brows, hoops. Harder to kill
your beloved or a god? What
if it’s both? The stakes
can’t be that high if the men don’t stay
dead. The women do. Except you, us.
Not your mother and her
hair like tasseled wheat, storming
the city square in performative grief.
It is never winter in your sunshine, even
when the fault lines of the myth rupture.
Prophecy says as prophecy does. The text:
written by a man. How can you negotiate
your liberation when you are the bargaining
chip? You let what devours you choke on you.
How many swan dives before you believed
you belonged in hell? I don’t blame you.
Unlike your friends. They drag you
into a bleached season, pretend
it was a gift. The underworld is
flooded; the family wealth, drained. Some would
call us cherished beneficiaries. We are
a twisted genre of royalty, the kind men
conscript into their geopolitical visions.
We were undersigned as child soldier, child
bride. Did you, too, grow tired of men
teaching you what muscle the gods
made you for, holding themselves as
the truest mirror to your power? Pull up
a chair. Everyone believes they know who
you are behind the glass in their homes
on any given Tuesday. Everyone has
a sword and a riddle to watch you
solve. To find your own way out of
a hall of mirrors, close your eyes.
LAUREN EGGERT-CROWE is the author of four published poetry chapbooks. Her poetry has appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Black Warrior Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Gigantic Sequins, Sugar House Review, and Sixth Finch, among others. She has been awarded residencies at Dorland Mountain Arts and Ragdale Foundation.
