Persephone Comes Home

looking like hell, pursued by paparazzi
who catch her swimming naked
in the sea. They want to put her

on MTV, dress her up like Stevie Nix,
but she is preparing a feast
for her mother, she is cartwheeling

through a pasture of poppies, she
is painting a masterpiece, she is
breathing the word green

in a field of alfalfa, she is tasting
a bittersweet plum, biting into a peach,
sticky juice on her skin. She is singing

with the nightingale, pirouetting
beneath a wilderness of desert stars,
she is licking the sea salt on her lips.

By the time they catch up to her
with book deals and a look-alike doll,
she is wearing maternity clothes.
They want to know what it's like
on the other side, who's there,
how did she survive, and how much money

will she take to relate her adventures
of life in the underworld,
complete with details of depravity

live on the six o'clock news or in an interview
with Barbara. They offer her
cosmetic surgery for her burns,

a bonus facelift. They offer her the world,
but she already has it. She will only say, hands spread
across her swelling belly,

Vivez sans temp mort.
Live without dead time.