Linda Lerner
We Came Prepared
for Dorothy Cantwell
to hear what the queen of the underworld had to say
that Saturday afternoon we sat in a Brooklyn diner
listening to a poet reach down into a woman's hell
catching us at exactly the right moment:
caught up all week in another woman's
abduction from innocence 36 years ago
she had our attention as a waitress walked
around taking orders and tales flounced in mythic
memories awakened in us, no myth
we were sure, 100 % it happened, maybe 15, 16
same age as the woman we heard
baring her soul, begged for belief when
a man's turkey on rye with mustard voiced
her silent sending Persephone back into
into Hades' grasp
Bio
My book, Taking the F Train, a collection of poems (NYQ Books) was just published, Oct. 2021. Previously published, When Death is a Red Balloon, Lummox Press, 2019 and A Dance Around the Cauldron, a prose work which consists of nine characters during the Salem witch trials brought into our own times (Lummox Press, 2017.) Yes, the Ducks Were Real & Takes Guts and Years Sometimes (NYQ Books (2011 & 2015). I live in New York City--- more than the place where I reside but one whose rhythms infuse my poetry.