The Pomegranate
The Pomegranate
by Kristina England
A woman, cross-legged,
leans over, bites fruit.
Water-laden pulp
slides down her chin.
She waits for her date
to cough, turn,
then wipes her skin
clean.
2 thoughts on “The Pomegranate”
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An intriguing image, which I’m trying to get more out of. Problem comes in the third stanza. If she didn’t want her date to see her making a mess, it doesn’t seem she would wait for him/her to “cough, turn” towards her before wiping her “skin clean.” And it doesn’t seem she would wait for her date turn away for her to do this. I can’t see the Persephone myth applying here, but the look of the fruit and its seeds are laden with sexuality, which the “cross-legged” business doesn’t invite yet the description of her eating the fruit suggests. The “water-laden pulp” dilutes this, and maybe she “wipes her skin clean” to prevent any suggestion. Maybe we’re supposed to imagine it going the other way–red ripe juice sliding “down her chin” without her wiping it off, in the date’s full view–to see and feel the contrast of her inhibition. But then maybe it’s the date’s inhibition that makes him/her “cough, turn” away (in response to her outright exhibition), which makes her clean herself up for the next move, which may result in physical contact between the two.
The pomegranate is the first fruit mentioned by name in the Torah. This might well be an alternate ending to the Genesis fall of man. Here, our dulcet lady of the prying mind has tasted of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil and thought better of it…keeping it to herself.