Three Poems by Dana Trick

 

Anastasi

 

There isn’t a more perfection allusion

To stories and story-crafting

Than spider-webs and weaving.

 

Details small and big,

Patterns simple and complicated,

Colours plain and vibrant

Are displayed with grace and skill,

Generation of ears and hearts so ensnared

By the majesty of threads and words.

 

A hand that only acts to destroy out of malice and pride

Cannot break a single string;

Instead, it becomes tangled within the grand web.

 

To tell a story,

To pass it down,

Is a difficult feat

Unless you know how to weave colors into flowers,

Winds and skies into songs, memories into people,

Soil and water into magic.

 

With each birth, with each dream, with each mouth,

My web will grow my grand and beautiful,

No thread or word wasted.

 

Hades

They call me cruel when I am just.

They call me horror when I am determined.

They call me evil when I am peace.

 

I give souls with no mortal flesh or extended time a home

But it is still up to them and their pasts

To make their afterlife a punishment or paradise.

 

I guard my domain well,

I cherish my wife beautifully,

I govern my realm fair,

Because it is the least I could do

For the mortals that have suffered and survived so much.

 

Persephone

With a huff and scoff,

I claw out another victim label off my breast.

 

The mortal men above are eager for my arrival above

So they could quickly rip & tear apart the spring flowers,

In the same manner of the divine rapist Zeus.

 

The mortal men above always attempt to seduce me in spring and summer

With beautiful masks and false poetry,

As if those were enough to convince me to leave my sweet husband and his fair Underworld

For the hypocrite realm of mortal men.

 

Whenever this happens,

I always smile with malice and vice

As I chuckle a foul “NEVER,” to those arrogant men.

 

Those foolish men try to strike me down,

But the very presence and touch of my flowers

Poison them whole.

I watch them pathetically crumble and wither in just torment

Below my feet.

 

My sweet, kind, loyal, and loving Hades comes to my side,

Barely glances the corpses below,

Kisses my cheek with love

And whispers a silly little love poem in my ear

That makes me giggle.

 

Together, hand in hand,

We walked home,

Taking some time to enjoy the last summer sunset.

Dana Trick - Born a first-generation Mexican-Canadian-American autistic demisexual with ADHD, Dana Trick lives in Southern California where it is clearly foolish to wear black any day but she does it anyway. Besides writing, she spends/wastes her day by either reading weird books and comics; researching history because she is an historian with a degree to prove it; drawing crappy art and comics which she posts on deviantART under Silencedbook9; and/or watching an unhealthy amount of cartoons, anime, and Youtube videos. Her work has been published online--in the Art of Autism, the Lothlorien Poetry Journal, The Quiver Review, The Writer Shed, and The Ugly Writers--as well as in print with the 2018 Moorpark College Print Review, the Poets’ Choice Realm of Emotions anthology, Free Spirit’s “Historic Tales” anthology, and Wingless Dreamer’s My Glorious Quill anthology. She wishes the reader a nice day.