"Forest of Noel" by Fiona Hsu
Winter Song by Katharine Rauk
How did Persephone get away
with eating just three seeds
of the pomegranate?
I would have crammed
the whole damned fruit
into my mouth. I would’ve had to
in one fierce swipe
oust the seeds from the walls.
You know how it is
as if they are all lined up like jewels
of blood just waiting to be bust
open on a tooth or knife.
What I’m saying is
if I were allowed to do as I pleased
in the basement of the dark god
it would be winter
(forgive me) all the time.
Come to think of it, maybe death
wouldn’t be so bad. Because then
there would no longer be any danger
of getting seized
by passion, being over-
come.
My friend is dead.
But her breast is still in a freezer
in a hospital somewhere outside
Boston. I think about that a lot.
Dear Persephone, sister
in grief and greed: Sing
for the criminals who take too much
pleasure from this life. Sing
for the ones who have been torn
in two. Sing for the mothers,
for the stars of grain they have
scattered, for the cells
in the body that might be
growing into bulbs secreted
in the subterranean world
beneath the skin.
Sing for the dead:
how their names become a stranger’s
gift upon your tongue.
with eating just three seeds
of the pomegranate?
I would have crammed
the whole damned fruit
into my mouth. I would’ve had to
in one fierce swipe
oust the seeds from the walls.
You know how it is
as if they are all lined up like jewels
of blood just waiting to be bust
open on a tooth or knife.
What I’m saying is
if I were allowed to do as I pleased
in the basement of the dark god
it would be winter
(forgive me) all the time.
Come to think of it, maybe death
wouldn’t be so bad. Because then
there would no longer be any danger
of getting seized
by passion, being over-
come.
My friend is dead.
But her breast is still in a freezer
in a hospital somewhere outside
Boston. I think about that a lot.
Dear Persephone, sister
in grief and greed: Sing
for the criminals who take too much
pleasure from this life. Sing
for the ones who have been torn
in two. Sing for the mothers,
for the stars of grain they have
scattered, for the cells
in the body that might be
growing into bulbs secreted
in the subterranean world
beneath the skin.
Sing for the dead:
how their names become a stranger’s
gift upon your tongue.
Katharine Rauk is the author of Buried Choirs (Tinderbox Editions, 2016) and the chapbook Basil (Black Lawrence Press, 2011). She has poems published in Pleiades, DIAGRAM, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Harvard Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Beloit Poetry Journal, Best of the Net, and other journals. She teaches at North Hennepin Community College in Minnesota.
Fiona Hsu was born in February of 2001 in Orange County, California. She has won first place in Yorba Linda Women’s Club art competition in 2019 with recognition from Congress, Senate, and Assembly, and she is a National Silver Medalist of Scholastic Art and Writing Awards 2019. Fiona is currently studying at UCLA as an undergraduate studio art major. Her works capture the aspects of beauty within woeful and melancholic definitions that narrate quaint and odd stories, in which she hopes her art serves as rusty mirrors for her audience—reflecting and reminding them of a quality and/or memory from the past.
Fiona’s works can be found on her website and her instagram page.
Fiona’s works can be found on her website and her instagram page.
