Poem-A-Week
Persephone in the Desert
Ja'net Danielo
Barefoot and mad,
I am back
from the cold blue
world of the dead.
I walk cooked clay, skirt
cacti and scorpions.
Wild island bitch, hair
tangled and matted
with sea salt, thirst
of stars in my mouth,
I spit light, raise
ribbons of saffron
crocuses from red rock,
violet succulents from
desert-singed brush.
Look at my star
scarred tongue,
my feet—sun-seared,
branded by dirt.
This is what it means
to hold death close,
tend to it like a seed.
Tell me it wasn’t
worth it. Tell me
we’d be better off
without this bloom—
this beauty reaped
from wounds—
marking the earth.
originally published in The Song of Our Disappearing (Paper Nautilus, 2021)
Ja'net Danielo is the author of The Song of Our Disappearing, a winner of the Paper Nautilus 2020 Debut Series Chapbook Contest. A recipient of a Professional Artist Fellowship from the Arts Council for Long Beach, her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Superstition Review, The Shore, GASHER, Mid-American Review, Radar Poetry, Gulf Stream, Frontier Poetry, and elsewhere. Originally from Queens, NY, Ja'net teaches at Cerritos College and lives in Long Beach, CA with her husband and her dog. You can find her at www.jdanielo.com.