The Making of Eve (jenni)

1.

It was a lovely June morning.
Chaffinches twittered and dew rested heavy
on the buttermilk tulips. The goddesses
of the universe: Kali, Pandora, and Nugua
were gathered under the gazebo
playing spades and eating pork rinds.
Nugua sensed something was wrong
with Pandora, who held onto the queen
when she could’ve passed it twice.
Nugua said, Tell me child, what’s
got your petticoats all ruffled?
Pandora flipped her soft brown ringlets,
(after her promotion to goddess status,
she became quite the diva)
and dug her nails into her pearly skin
until a rainbow of blood collected
under her French manicure.
She broke down crying. The rumors,
she just couldn’t stand them anymore!
All the gossip made her sound irresponsible.
She never opened that stupid jar,
it was that gruffly Epimetheus, whose name
by the way, meant “think later.” Duh.
Why should she be blamed for hunger,
old age, disease, labor, and greed?
Zeus swore they were strawberry preserves!
Kali, who remained silent thru the outburst,
jumped up from her pincushion
salivating and turning red as a radish.
The torque of giants' skulls clanged
and clattered around her throat as a moan
bubbled, gurgled and finally hissed
thru her lips like steam from a volcano.
What did Pandora know about slander?
Kali exploded: Listen to me little princess,
at least you’re not the personification of death
and destruction, accused of dancing
on your husband’s back like a cheap slut
drunk on a tabletop after you’ve slain
a thousand men to save the world! Plus,
you’re not known for carrying a dripping
Giant’s head from one of FOUR arms.
Nugua, the sensible one of the bunch,
waved her dragon tail, silencing Kali.
Tightening her Qing cout robe,
embroidered with a gold sequined phoenix,
she calmly assured that she too
was a victim of chauvinism, and so the story
goes she committed incest with Fuxi,
her own brother, to create the mortal world,
when in fact she’d done it single handedly
with mud and pebbles melted down
into a viscous substance that she slung
across the oceans and mountains.
I feel exploited! wailed Pandora.
I want revenge! screamed Kali.
Nugua fanned herself violently.
The ground rumbled. A black mass
of thunderclouds swallowed the sun.
The dot on Kali’s forehead lightened
to the fawn-color of her eyelids,
creases formed and sunk into a socket,
lashes tickled the bridge of her nose.
The dot opened. An amber eye rolled
around then fixated on a tortoise shell
where a goat was lapping rainwater.


2.

After the invocation of Kali’s third eye,
the goddesses topped off a bottle of bubbly.
Create another woman said the vision,
(it was a dappled crow with three legs),
a woman whose evils will surpass your own.
It’s called blame transmission, an elementary
psychological inverted principal. Freudian,
Jungian, Skinnerian, Lacanian, maybe
even Darwinian. Kali stood. Her garland
of skulls jingled. A wind from the west
whipped her funeral black hair like fringe.
We’ll create a woman! she roared,
fetching the tortoise shell pot.
A woman for that god who resembles
Robert Redford but calls himself the Lord.
She’ll be tame as a toucan, fair like lilac,
we’ll place her in that precious orchard,
nature reserve, or whatever it is of his,
the one where every warbler whistles
and bees never wish they were peas.
Pandora ecstatically joined her. Yes!
She should be submissive! she cried
and dropped a valium into the pot.
Kali collected dandelion puffs, blew seeds
into the pot and wished her to be naïve.
Nugua scooped clay from the earth,
shaped a female figure, summoned
her pet lioness and plucked a whisker.
Nugua pressed it into the figure’s head,
tossed them into the shell and said firmly,
but this woman should also be curious.
The goddesses watched Nugua twist
a sequin off her embroidered dragon robe
and throw it into the pot. Light caught
the sequin and it twinkled. Nugua shrugged,
What good was curiosity without intuition?
She winked at the goddesses. Rain fell
into the shell, mixing the ingredients.


3.

Adam wasn’t hard to trick.
Pandora wore black fishnet stockings,
stilettos, strutted up to him and asked
if he wanted to watch her eat a banana.
While he searched for a banana tree,
Nugua turned herself into a vine,
coiled around his ankle and tripped him.
No one saw the rock. After his rib cracked,
he went unconscious for over an hour.
Kali laid the sleeping woman beside him.
It got awfully sugary for a minute.
Kali’s eyes welled. Pandora sniffled.
Nugua was too practical for such nonsense.
They needed to name the woman
something wholesome Adam would believe.
Rose? Too cliché. Didi? Too sexy.
Bertha? No, that was like so Paleolithic.
Kali looked to the horizon glazed with clouds
like pink cotton candy. Pandora meditated
on pallid stars shone in the ever soft blue.
The sleeping woman stirred, yawned
and muttered, I’m Eve. Who are you?
The goddesses glanced at her quizzically,
then grinned at one another and tittered,
Why we’re your fairy godmothers, dear.