POETRY
By Jessica Cohn
A woman could forget herself,
staring at pomegranate in the produce section.
Juicy red arils, peddled in see-through cups.
It’s involuntary. The mouth makes room
for a sweet bite of seeds. A woman
could remember when pomegranate was
hard to come by, a strange fruit appearing
in paintings at the institute of arts—
monstrous red berries bulbous with
shadow, light and lack, shaping flesh.
Pomegranate was hanging low in Paradise,
some say, that Milton gave us apples
based on a pun. What’s forbidden,
a woman’s questions, root of her troubles,
though the questions ask themselves.
So much is involuntary. Have all the poems
about young Persephone been written?
Because a woman wants to ask that girl
about her first bite of the fruit, how she
avoided root and peel, stain and poison.
Did the old man demonstrate how to pound
jewels from the membrane, how to submerge
the whole mess in a bowl filled with water,
how to make the cuts? A woman could forget
what’s myth, why some still speak of giving
a daughter, taking a wife. It’s hard to say
in which world a growing girl could be safe.
So many car doors. Forms of incarceration.
A woman could not fathom why the god of
the underworld abducts a niece, and only
the mother grieves. Persephone, child,
come home for the summer so I can ask
you, so I can hug you, give you pomegranate,
here on the other side. Let you remember
how the mind can empty in sunshine, nothing
but a field of flowers between the legs
This story originally appeared in Stonecoast Review Issue 18.
Photo by Paula Morin.