Identity Politics by Richaundra Thursday

Stolen child, cause of seasons,
Kidnapped bride, forbidden fruit sorority,
Fertility harvest goddess, victim of patriarchal unification,
Sacrificial lamb of civilization.
Hydra headed moon goddess:
Mother, maiden, crone
Innocent, temptress, tamer, queen.
Resentful and contented,
A cipher defined by relations;
Significant only as corpse, as ladder:
Brutalization as fuel, the engine
Powering cycles of life.
The scarlet thread hemming
The ebon mourning shroud of
Myth, faery tale, historiographical legend
Foster mother of beauty, sistercousinmother to madness.
Only ever permitted one choice
And even that a moralistic trap,
Sister to Eve, to Sita, to every survivor,
Patron of any told they must not have fought hard enough:
Look where you were, alone in the fields.
How could he resist.
Saint of ‘It must have been your fault,’
The convict, the incarcerated.
Artemis gets the moon, Hecate the night,
But she receives the dead;
As flexible as a willow
And strong as an ash.
Perhaps she gathers us close,
Embraced eternally.
Once her part played, only trotted out
To grant favors, mercies denied her.
Hail, Kore, Maiden of the day and corn
And beauty grasped by unafraid girls;
Hail, Persephone, Queen of the Underworld,
Sovereign of dark grace and hopeful restitution.

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