Persephone strikes the match
on a smoldering femur
at her feet, lights a cigarette.
As she exhales
she remembers daylight,
can sometimes smell
the lilacs through the smog
of her husband’s kingdom.
Hades is away again,
so she smokes in the open.
He says it’s unbecoming
of such a beautiful woman.
Beauty, she scoffs, drops the cigarette.
She longs to rise through the earth,
a snowdrop waking after endless winter.
Awakening
Maureen Egan Riggi lives and writes in Central New Jersey. Poems have appeared in the Kelsey Review, US1 Worksheets, Journal of New Jersey Poets, Thimble Literary Magazine, and North of Oxford. Maureen has received two Pushcart Prize nominations, and her latest manuscript, Ordinary Women, explores well-known mythological figures as modern women. Maureen received a BA in Literature/Creative Writing from Stockton University, and currently works at Princeton University. She shares her home with her husband, son, and two cats. When she is not writing she can be found singing, cooking, embroidering, or making jewelry.