Eve Everywhere

Eve has been and is still reviled, though many, like me, bless her for bringing us down to earth. Without Eve’s daring action, the human race wouldn’t be here. It was this thought that compelled me to riff off the Old Testament’s negative depiction of Eve. The poems in Eve Everywhere are dedicated to her and Adam, our first planetary explorers.

 

All Day Eve Is With Me

 In the dream I borrow the silk-rungs to climb clouds.

In the dream I borrow the snake to push beyond the idyllic.

In the dream I borrow God’s face and place it on Adam, then pluck an apple and name it 

Tree of Life.

In the dream I borrow pleasure’s feathery fall to earth.

In the dream I borrow the first woman to come from outer space.

In the dream I borrow passion and layer it with past lives, then bow to Eve who was 

borrowed.

 

EVE-ING

1

Like a lover I had 

to leave is how 

I think of the Lord. 

2

The wind pierces

with such force it unties

the branches of my heart.  

3

I brush off the dust.

What’s underneath is

life’s song.

 

HEY RIB 8  

         Rumor has it ‘round the cage you’re going to be an orphan. The Lord’s going to rip you from our birthplace and turn you into something called woman.  I had a nightmare about this: God comes into His office and what does He have in His arms? You, Rib 8, wrapped in a pink blanket which He hands to some vapor and you walk out the door a second-hand human. That’s what a female is. God created Adam so he’s divine but there’s nothing holy about a woman wrought from a rib. 

Don’t do it. Remember we’re brothers. Riot if you have to but you belong to us, your 24-rib family.

 Your upstairs neighbor, Rib 7 

 

DÉJÀ VU

 In the South African black eagle

the Cain-Abel pattern repeats.

Once a year the mother hosts two eggs.

Out comes Cain and

about a week later, Abel appears.  

As they grow, the first born 

shoves Abel from

the family’s perch

and the newborn dies.

 

THE ORPHAN’S MOTHER

 Eve slips into that other world

where she began.

In this parallel place,

Earth’s soul enfolds her:

I am your mother.

Though you had none

—a rib is cold comfort to come from.

I offer you this:

 Learn to navigate the world from birds.

See history through an elephant’s eye.

Sit with the stone’s patience

and listen to tree-speak.

Discuss the origins of existence with an owl.

Catch the wind to send you beyond what you know. 

And then, embrace me, daughter,

 as raindrops fall.

 

CEO EVE

A suit pends between

Apple and The Eden Group.

CEO Eve is suing the tech giant

for using her bitten apple as a logo

without her permission,

a symbol that is now iconic.

The suit goes before the Supreme Court in June

and could yield the Eden Group ten billion dollars,

an amount the U.S. government spent in one week

fighting the war in Iraq.

 

GIRLFRIENDS

—for M.S.

 What if Adam’s first wife were to Eve 

like the girlfriend you had in high school

who had sex with her boyfriend 

before you did? 

What if she were so close to you,

she’d describe every luscious detail

where just a touch 

could set fires?

What if, contrary to what you thought,

they couldn’t wait to do it again

because the more you practice 

the better it gets? 

And what if this same intimacy

Lilith and Eve shared 

gave you the courage 

to give the unknown a bite?

 

Golden Mother: Eve figure holding an apple pie, a key with a bloody mark at her rib symbolizing the knowledge of good and evil and therefore freedom, was born from woman’s body as all men are born from woman’s body. Titles & Descriptions of Illustrations by Calamity Cole
Eve Unveiled: A portrait of Eve with a blindfold falling away from her face uncovering one eye. A pink snake wrapped around her head unties it. It symbolizes the willful “blinding” and binding of women in society and the knowledge of good and evil freeing her.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Jean Colonomos

 

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