Pomegranate

Sepra swore she had always tried to do what was real and true. This made her worthy of morning bread and not hideous. Before she had swallowed her guts and parcled her vanity as etiquette she would skitter away from the sun which accosted her from time to time to kiss the rosary beads which hung like a miscarriage around her swollen hips. Hips much too large not to be obscene she remarked. Oh so they were, those hips of hers which swung like wrist watches and pendulum clocks--the men stared every quarter of an hour to check the time-- hips of mass which purged empty space and ripped its contents out onto the heels of her feet. The earth rippled and sang and moaned and cried and then died with one footstep of that Sepra.

Oh, Sepra

She bit into an apple. She bit. She bit into the apple! The men cried. Sepra grabbed from the stocks of branches the reddest of pomegranates. But the men saw only apples. They watched, eyes raised to temples, as she nibbled on the skins and then spat them. Nibble, Nibble, spit, Nibble, Nibble, spit. The men anchored themselves to her like a mouth on a hook, lips crimson, cracked and cleft open. Drool. Oh yes, there was so much drool it made the breeze thick with wet. The air moving like river water towards Sepra took a strand of her hair with it and called to her attention the breath of desire. The men folded at their navels and howled: “The big cat knows! She is watching us watching.” Exhale. Sepra exhaled a laugh, large and arrogant (this was not the sort of arrogance which men carry like a costume. This was true arrogance: likeness with one's fingernails). The men sang:

Indeed.

She knows how to jest

She knows how a kiss lands

She knows how to be

When night rips the seams

I seek I seek I seek

Her

Indeed.

Sepra’s ear quirked as they howled--they clawed at each other's vocal chords--a terrible sound to sway to. Alas, her body was tilting towards the surge of hymn and tide. Whisping and willowing her thought fell head first into black as her chest raised with the thrum and the hum and the skit and the jit of the jestering wolves whacking wormwood down their throats like water. Oh! She cried. Oh! Oh! And the wolves circled her, at once protector and assailant. What would they choose? She wondered. Her body thrummed with orgasmic pleasure: she felt an earthworm squirm between her toes. Oh! She cried. She felt the mud slip wet like arousal up her dancing calves. Oh! She focused intently on the big dogs, they’re coats wet with spirits and asked: What will you do?

Sepra did not mean to bring out the worst in her lovers. She only sought to encourage a willing in her men. But Sepra soon found, through some insidious scenes, that she was a black magic woman of sorts. A conjurer of voids which demands the will, but provides no grounds, no ceiling which tells you: stop, you are done. She was a shadowing master of puppetry, bringing only one lack: Inhibitions. Limitations. Restrictions. Prohibitions. Whichever you wish to call it. What will you do?--then, is nothing more than what can you do.

What will you do? Sepra found that all she could do was ask the question.