She wishes to know if I am oh-kay,
if I am doing well, smiling over the rim of a tea-cup like jackals with secrets.
Persephone gets caught in my teeth
every time I think of some answer.
Trapped in rows of off-white winter bone,
she wriggles around in my old lady gums,
cursing, shouting, kicking--
our mouths are epic ballads of lies in the name of not-worrying-anyone.
Then they worry us to death.

The Hades made out of all of our lies:
Everything's great! We're all great! Everyone is fine!
keeps pulling her back down into the earth of my heart.
Where no one knows I have eaten a seed of myself.

Demeter, howling for her lost child dies,
like doves crushed in cruel children's hands.