There are four poems in all. The first two are variations of the SAME poem. Use all four or any combination, for your first Five-Paragraph Essay. Visit my office or set up an appointment if you need further help. Do not procrastinate and feel overwhelmed, thus ignoring the challenge. In addition, essay writing is designed for you to think and apply your own interpretation to a literary work. Grab the bull by the horns!
Good luck,
Professor D
Persephone I
waits out the sharp pain of her father’s fingernails inside her.
No one, not even her mother says anything about this.
She watches as her father’s tight lips beat the black off her.
Threatens her with a pan of hot grease.
Rolls her eyes to back of her head as he smashes a single carpel sprinkled across her bed.
Because of this no boy ever wants her eyes, says her name.
There is no one for her father to scare off, none to follow her home.
Instead he rubs his hands over his knees as her mother closes the curtains.
Like a wolf, he waits, breaks her bad, then eats her himself.
Any thought of an abortion is nine months gone.
Nightmares of a dead baby trying to kill her, kills her.
Nothing to do now, but wait till she’s old enough to leave.
For some bad bad nigger to come along and take her.
She wonders about the nigger who’ll make her flutter in ways her father couldn’t.
When it does happen, she doesn’t see it coming.
Some boy traps her.
Pushes her back against a bed that feels like the inside of a mouth.
His nails are softer. Filed down like the devils in her mind.
He puts sport upon her hips.
His lips don’t crack when he opens his mouth to take her while she waits.
She realizes then: she is nothing like the white maiden in the mythology her mother told her about.
She feels the underworld fine.
She waits for men to take her face and say her name.
She puts their fingers against the edge: into the place her father’s sharp nails dwell.
Persephone (Version II)
always heard she was easy as pickings.
Walking alone by herself at night.
Her mother watched as he took her,
looked the other way,
closed the curtains.
Even Old Satan couldn’t get along without plenty of help.
The things he did to her.
After that, she saw boys for what they were.
Followed after them into a cave.
They told her they could fix the devils in her mind.
Used their sharp nails to prove it.
As a result, entire worlds opened up, welcomed her with without shame.
She wanted a boy who could give her what her father couldn’t.
When it does happen, she doesn’t see it coming.
Some boy traps her.
Pushes her back against a bed that feels like the inside of a mouth.
His nails are softer,
filed down like the devils in her mind.
He puts sport upon her hips.
They don’t crack when he opens his mouth to take her while she waits.
She realizes then: she is nothing like the white maiden in the mythology her mother told her about.
She feels the underworld fine.
She waits for men to take her face and say her name.
She puts their fingers against the edge: into the place her father’s sharp nails dwell.
Persephone II
She wants a chance, any chance to run on off.
But waits barefoot and naked for him behind the door.
Hard days involve him edging through the dark.
Waiting: at the back door, stealing again and again what he stole already.
Broken women think heaps of him; bring him money;
watch him treat his daughter like one would a shadow.
But Persephone is not his wife; the one insult she could not accept
and the father who did not know the difference.
Persephone III
She’s thinking of red again.
The roses he brought turns into thorns.
White maidens, holding white sheets, help clean the blood.
She spends waking days fantasying. If she had known
she would have ended it a while back. When he comes for her
fantasies become all the more real; thorns turn into roses.
