Revolution

He watches the tail lights of her car
disappear down the rutted driveway,
throws a hammer after her
yells don’t come back

He turns towards his trailer
weeds pushing through the metal steps
propped up on cinder blocks
a hole punched in a cupboard door
a cracked cell phone screen
testimony to long nights with her back turned to him
and anger that seeped into his dreams

In a few hours the first birds will start to sing
before it’s even light
the snow will keep melting in the mountains
on its way down to the river
and Saturn will finish its first turn around the sun
since the day that he was born.

Persephone’s Abduction

When she was small, she collected nectar
from honeysuckle blossoms in a small Dixie cup

and wove a chain from daisies. She cried
when the firefly died in its jar and couldn’t fly again

.
When she was older, she moved to the Village and
worked in a flower shop, choosing roses and lilies and

arranging baby’s breath among red poppies.
One day, she was finishing a bouquet

of fragrant and snow-white narcissus
when he came in. She looked up,

took in his dark hair, his melancholy smile,
his tattered jacket. And she was gone.

Her mother looked everywhere, drove up and down
the darkened streets, paused at each street lamp

and put up countless flyers on littered light poles.
She stopped drug dealers and prostitutes

but no one knew anything. Her daughter’s roommate
wanted the next month’s rent and shut the door in her face.

Her mother made it snow, and snow, and snow. She wanted
her daughter back. The price, she knew, would be high.

Cindy Yarberry is a retired educator with a Master’s degree in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She worked in adult literacy, slogged through teaching high school, and taught in various community colleges. Her work has been published in The Sun.