Demeter in Winter
I swear I didn’t summon this
December shitstorm of sleet and pellets,
onyx nights and black ice sheeting
the bridges, rattling the washboards,
the Ford Explorer upside down
in the frozen swamp beneath the power lines,
moon-roof punched by a fat tree stump,
frost spattered with glass
and the driver crushed at sixteen.
The earth split and death dragged her
into a velvet chasm and the jaws of life
couldn’t pry her out. Those teenagers
weren’t wearing seatbelts
I tell my girls, though it might not
be true, only a mother’s ruse to scrape
some lesson from the horror, cast a feeble
spell of protection over the beloved
bundles of bone. Exhaustion
is a root ache deep in the jaw.
Relief is a silken rope, unbound.
Fear is a poison berry, half-swallowed,
breeding paralysis and prayer:
not my daughters, never, never.
Through dark and deeper dark they crawl
into the belly of winter’s beast, peel
a pomegranate, ruby hell-fruit,
savor seeds of the interior,
seeds of another body,
sweet juice absorbed into their budding cells
as I drive past the torches
lit by the dead girl’s parents, the other
dead girl with the wild blue eyes
and a shovel in the back
of her bright red pick-up, whose strong arms
sliced across the pond in June. Never swim a river
after three days of rain, I warn my two,
trying to scare the danger out of them,
make them heed the hidden whirlpools
waiting beneath moving water.
I don’t say she was swallowed.
I don’t say her body surfaced
fifteen miles downstream.
Now I skid through December’s
passage on slick salted roads, my girls
strapped in back singing pop radio,
a fake wreath on the plastic shrine
where rain hisses on the power lines
and a solar candle burns ice-blue
all the merciless hours of the night.
December shitstorm of sleet and pellets,
onyx nights and black ice sheeting
the bridges, rattling the washboards,
the Ford Explorer upside down
in the frozen swamp beneath the power lines,
moon-roof punched by a fat tree stump,
frost spattered with glass
and the driver crushed at sixteen.
The earth split and death dragged her
into a velvet chasm and the jaws of life
couldn’t pry her out. Those teenagers
weren’t wearing seatbelts
I tell my girls, though it might not
be true, only a mother’s ruse to scrape
some lesson from the horror, cast a feeble
spell of protection over the beloved
bundles of bone. Exhaustion
is a root ache deep in the jaw.
Relief is a silken rope, unbound.
Fear is a poison berry, half-swallowed,
breeding paralysis and prayer:
not my daughters, never, never.
Through dark and deeper dark they crawl
into the belly of winter’s beast, peel
a pomegranate, ruby hell-fruit,
savor seeds of the interior,
seeds of another body,
sweet juice absorbed into their budding cells
as I drive past the torches
lit by the dead girl’s parents, the other
dead girl with the wild blue eyes
and a shovel in the back
of her bright red pick-up, whose strong arms
sliced across the pond in June. Never swim a river
after three days of rain, I warn my two,
trying to scare the danger out of them,
make them heed the hidden whirlpools
waiting beneath moving water.
I don’t say she was swallowed.
I don’t say her body surfaced
fifteen miles downstream.
Now I skid through December’s
passage on slick salted roads, my girls
strapped in back singing pop radio,
a fake wreath on the plastic shrine
where rain hisses on the power lines
and a solar candle burns ice-blue
all the merciless hours of the night.
Diana Whitney writes across the genres in Vermont with a focus on feminism, motherhood, and sexuality. Her first book, Wanting It (Harbor Mountain Press), became an indie bestseller and won the Rubery Book Award in poetry. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Glamour, Dame Magazine, the Kenyon Review, Diode, SWWIM, and many more. A feminist activist in her hometown and beyond, Whitney advocates for survivors of sexual violence and works as an editor and yoga teacher. Her next book, You Don’t Have to Be Everything: Poems for Girls Becoming Themselves, is forthcoming from Workman Publishing in April, 2021.
Art: Still LIfe with Pomegranates and Knife on a Pedestal by Louis Marcoussis