Being Forced to Leave My Mother in Her Wine-Dark Robe

Ray Ball

Perhaps they will say I loved him. Justify his crimes.
Everyone who listens to the physicians of roaming wombs or
Reads that hack Aristotle thinks all young girls want is
Sex. Lusting all day long like a character in Lysistrata. They will say I wasn’t so innocent.
Erelong the hands that plucked the flowers, didn’t claw hard enough. They
Played with Hades’ prick. The composers of odes will ponder
How I must have known the pomegranate was webbed with death.
Or at least Ovid will suggest it. How I became enraged with jealousy. Fuck off,
Nymph. How I will pluck the mint, I turned that bitch into. How I long
Each year to return to the underworld. Let everything wither.

Ray Ball currently lives on the land of the Dena’ina, where she works as a history professor at the University of Alaska Anchorage. She is the author of the poetry collection Trinities (Louisiana Literature Press, 2023). Ray’s poems and fiction have appeared in numerous journals, including Free State Review, Glass, Orange Blossom Review, and X-R-A-Y. Ray has received multiple nominations for Pushcart and been a Best of the Net finalist.