Kurt Cole Eidsvig – Seasonal

Kurt Cole Eidsvig’s poem Seasonal is an ode to the goddess Persephone whose twin connections to both spring and death provide the framework for a personal connection to distance, love, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of us are closed off and isolated today at the same time as the world around us is in bloom; our desire for reaching out and touching from the limits of confinement have, according to the Key West-based poet, ‘turned us into armies of the goddess.’

Seasonal

We forget when Persephone
comes back
in winter she’s the orgasmic
dictator of fist clutches
regaining exhales on our
sheets. She says, you don’t
understand. He isn’t anything
like you.

She leaves and returns and learns
only one and one can add to one of us.

We see the world as plays and movies
because our favorite actress beckons eyes
in ivory nightslips; her candy skin as thin

and sweet as lilies bending over
and reflecting in the tv screen, thick
and thicker with soaked up solutions.

We can’t eat or sleep
or shake the stain of headaches
until our single needs are solved here.

Her lashes cast in nets and get
the corners turned of mouths. Of course
you always knew this was forever.
Our twin delicious predicaments resound

in songs or sounds or promises you
couldn’t help but trust. They’re flames;
the pomegranate seeds. They’re flames.

Kurt Cole Eidsvig

Kurt Cole Eidsvig is an artist, poet, and writer who lives and works in Key West where he chases the ghosts of Bishop, Silverstein, Frost, Tennessee Williams, and Hemingway on his beach cruiser bike whenever he gets the chance while speaking with an unapologetic Boston accent. His artwork has been showcased in multiple gallery shows and exhibitions in Key West, Boston, Los Angeles, and Sydney. Poets Reading the News, Hanging Loose, Big Red & Shiny, ArtsAmerica, Examiner, and The Southeast Review have frequently published his poetry, criticism, and hybrid forms. Media outlets like The Boston Globe, The Improper Bostonian, NewPages, and BNN have reviewed and featured Kurt and his work, and he has earned writing awards from the Warhol Foundation/Creative Capital, The Massachusetts Cultural Council, The South Boston Literary Gazette, and The University of Montana. You can learn more at www.EidsvigArt.com and follow him on Instagram at @kceidsvig.