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Image: Bowl of Fruit, 11” x 14”, acrylic on canvas

 

This week I received a copy of my Quebecois friend Lou Lemelin’s latest zine .  There are three so far, each a short pamphlet featuring her character Omalou’s poignant life stories, illustrated with her delightful line drawings. As she explained to me in her translation of the first one, “Omalou is my avatar; in real life, it’s my granny name; Oma is Granny in Dutch.”  The latest zine is called Omalou et Satan, and is “dedicated to all those who suffered, as children, the cruelty of religions. To all women who, even today, feel guilty, inadequate, unsure of themselves and doubt their value or the legitimacy of their choices.”  Like her first two zines, this one makes a powerful statement – no surprise coming from a woman with a long history of storytelling through decades of award-winning journalism and documentaries.

Her subject reminded me of my poem, Glassy Apples, which riffs off the biblical Eve as temptress tale, turning it upside down by empowering Eve and taking Satan out of the picture entirely, replacing him with an ordinary worm. 

 

Glassy Apples

            —after the painting by Mary Pratt

 

The truth is, the snake had nothing at all to do with it, in fact
was not even a serpent, but a worm poking his little head
out of an apple as Eve passed by

                                                      gathering food in the orchard
for her wedding and the green maggot wanted an invitation
to the feast. Being a woman,

                                              Eve knew all about
buffets, how a table should please the eye first, then the palate,
so she plucked only the finest fruit. Set aside

                                                                        one particular
red delicious, its skin as smooth as her own and Adam's youth,
sliced it open to expose the magic

                                                       pentacle centre, perfect
brown seeds in a bed white as sheets – for luck and long life as
each bit into half, sealing

                                        their marriage vows,
and all in the garden cheered, except the worm who cursed
the whole affair from afar, vowed

                                                     revenge, thought up
the story of forbidden fruit while he watched the guests gobble
what he wanted:

                          those gorgeous apples in glass bowls,
on that glass table top she put there on purpose to catch
the glimmer of sun

                               on his favourite fruit, placed in calm
repose upon a bed of reflections where tongues of light
licked skin, now burnished

                                          to a passion he'd never imagined
possible, and kept where he couldn't get at it. I'll make
them pay for this, he snickered,

                                                          gripping his pen
and, knowing a grub was too abhorrent to be believed
even in Paradise,

                             used snake as pseudonym, named
Eve temptress, Adam sinner, and invented a God
of vengeance; kept his eye

                                            on the glitter of envy and
avarice while he made up shame and never even noticed
at the bottom of it all, left of centre, his own

                                                                      small heart
bursting with unrequited love.

 

Glassy Apples is one of three ekphrastic poems I wrote after visiting Mary Pratt’s exhibition, The Substance of Light, at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 1996 (see Wednesday Poem #9: Improvisation for another approach to the form).  A note to this poem in my book Suddenly, So Much (Exile Editions) explains the wedding vow reference: “At Gypsy weddings it was customary for the bride and groom to cut the apple, revealing its pentacle, and eat half apiece. Such marriage customs may suggest the real story behind Eve’s sharing an apple with her spouse.” – Barbara G Walker, The Women’s Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects, Harper & Rowe, 1988, p. 480).