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 […]
Maureen Egan Riggi
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.
Rut
I didn’t see him, the young buck in the throes of rutting, as he emerged with breath steaming in the dawn. I didn’t see the budding antlers wrapped in velvet, the heaving chest, ribs pressing against air like moth wings against a porchlight globe. My foot instinctively switched pedals, I knew too late the brakes […]