Persephone's Darner :
Tricia Barker
| Persephone is gone in the winter, and Demeter blames herself, refusing to eat. The effort of movement from the bathroom to the bedroom is strenuous, and all the Amaranth and Kamut flour has gone to hell in her cabinets.
To love someone beyond control is torture.
Memories of her small, fragile daughter replay both in her mind and in the ether.
Persephone’s light body bends and jumps in a luminous meadow. She is surrounded by friendly dragonflies (zigzag darners, spine-crowned club tails fine-lined emeralds, faded pennants). Repeat.
This child could be any child with a step light and happy enough to enter the world of wings.
When Hades stopped his truck beside her, forcing her in and ending her childhood, surely, at least one darner steeled his airy body with dragon-like determination, staying beside Persephone as a witness, strong enough to migrate down to the underworld.
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The Fool's Crush :
Tricia Barker
In ninth grade I lost myself in tender feelings,
slow breezes, and a new heat that tumbled
down the length of my arms and legs.
School days swayed in the energy and knowing smile of Coach.
He sparkled when he walked, and I thought about his ass,
tight in the baseball uniform, and the two pictures of his wife,
plain and overweight, not a woman I imagined him with.
So, I continued to sway my newly formed hips
past his classroom and to my locker.
Day after school day, I envisioned his suntanned hands
on my taut abdomen, the small of my back, and curve of my neck.
I continued to believe that if I imagined these moments with enough intensity,
never opening my mouth to speak, never holding his glance
for over a second, if I went home, praying on the bus
like a bright wildflower, touching myself late and night
and speaking his first name slowly, softly,
then this desire might carry across any distance—
from my pale bedroom without a door
through the pine forest behind my house,
past dairy cattle, along black-top roads,
and into his box of a living room, reaching
like a silver hand through his TV
and gripping him.
Tricia Barker studied English at The University of Texas at Austin, and then went on to teach in Korea. After that, she traveled the U.S. teaching SAT courses at boarding schools. In 2001, she received her MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College. Currently, she teaches English for DCCCD and online Creative Writing classes.