PROSERPINA CONTADINA

“Our existence is made up only of his waiting for our acceptance of not being.” 

––Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace

I want to die, to see

Hade’s abiding autumn this once & only time,

to behold that interminable tramonto

& move meekly beyond the mountain,

remember my first dusk

& long for it.

the moist lotus open

for lack of it,

& I unwitting as the other newborn dead

who bide their time before the bellow

of Charon’s oar, all us lost littered

along Acheron––

our dresses hiked & lurching into Lethe,

stomping our memories into murk,

our mirth fortifying the river’s wine.

I want to die, to see

myself crushed like grapes

the moist lotus open

skins empty & soul shorn

from the body’s pomace

along Acheron—

the simmer of death’s ferment.

ma non ci sta spazia in cielo?

vorrei che Dio mi venga piglià.

yet still I sprout, cornucopial, amongst sullen men carrying their scythed wheat & shucked corn away from their tables into the full mouths of the overfed, working for the coin that covers their eyes & teaching their children a grim liturgy:

“take these crusts. fare la scarpetta. polish your plate like a priest combing the chalice for the last crumbs of Christ with a splash of His blood.”

(Note: The italicized lines are taken from Mary Barnard’s translations of Sappho and the Italian from things my grandmother has said; translated, those lines are “but is there no space in heaven?” and “I wish God would come and take me,” respectively).

by Joe Gross

Joe Gross is a Flushing-based bookseller, poet, translator, and author of the prize-winning chapbook Lest We All Get Clipped (Ghostbird Pres, 2023). His work has been anthologised in Eating Alone (Clothesline Press, 2023) and The Pearl (Wyeth Renwick, 2023). He holds an MFA from Queens College, CUNY where he was co-editor of the Armstrong Literary. Find him on Twitter @komradekapybara and @joegrosspoet on Instagram.