by Amorak Huey
I feel like I read somewhere that the fruit from the tree of knowledge was not an apple as commonly thought but a plum. We had plum trees and apple trees in our garden when I was growing up. The plums were small and the apples were sour. I kept a spoon from the kitchen under the T-shirts in my dresser and used it to sneak bites of brown sugar from the yellow box in the pantry. Was it the sweet I craved or the stealing? Did I learn then to associate my favorite flavor with the forbidden, the illicit, the under-cover-of-dark? Is it why I now enjoy being alone in my house? Does it explain the nonsense I believe about love? Or hunger? When I say I don’t believe in original sin, am I forgetting that saccharine crumble dissolving on my tongue? ANYWAY, what I’m saying is that Eve was right, when someone offers a taste you take it no matter the cost.
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Amorak Huey is author of four books of poems including Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy (Sundress Publications, 2021). Co-founder with Han VanderHart of River River Books, Huey teaches writing at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. He also is co-author with W. Todd Kaneko of the textbook Poetry: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2018) and the chapbook Slash/Slash (Diode, 2021).
Image: Dana
Image description: many purple-blue plums.
Psaltery & Lyre 