The Pomegranate

Welcome to the center of the pomegranate Listen to voices of the past Demons of the future And children of the present

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♤ Call me Noella,

♤ eighteen, American valley girl, history major, poet, writer, lover, spiritually a seventy year old man.

♤ favorite books: The Secret History, Inferno, The Bell Jar, The Pictures of Dorian Gray, The Great Gatsby, Little Woman, If We Were Villains, The Song Of Achilles. (And a bunch of fantasy romances we won’t name).

♤ favorite poets/writers: Plath, Camus, Poe, Kafka, Dostoevsky, Tartt, Didion, Shelly, Nin, Keats, Byron, and too many more.

♤ hobbies/interests: writing, reading, listening to music, hyperfixating on book characters, driving along the coast, staring in the mirror, conversing with straight men, eye contact, loving.

♤ what to expect from my page: I started my page a long time ago that had a much different look and post, which I refuse to get rid of. But now I’ll be posting my own poems, poems I like, my takes on books and other pieces of literature, pictures I find pretty, and maybe a rant if I have absolutely no one else to talk to.

♤ just this of my page as one big Gatsby party hosted by me, Noella, and my Daisy is the oblivion of aesthetic and absolute talent.

-Noella

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When I first read that quote from Genesis 4:9 where God asks Cain where Abel is and he replied “am I my brothers keeper” I interpreted as this haunting rhetorical question that was more of this dawning realization and spiral into madness and guilt. “Am I my brothers keeper?” Asks Cain with a thousand mile stare and hunched over back, knowing that whatever is left of Abel belongs to him because of this action he committed, something with a name yet, a sin yet defined until he declared it. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Cain repeats over and over, does he now live in him, his ribs a cage, his mind a labyrinth, where Abel cannot escape, where Cain cannot avoid Abel. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Does the end of his line meet at my feet? Does his demise start where I begin? The brother I was most jealous of, does all I amount to sum up to who he was, is my action his story, and will how we are remembered always be paired together? My brother’s keeper, is that what I’ve sentenced myself to be?

But no it was just Cain being a little smart ass, trying to distract God with a know it all response while probably suffocating with ways to hide what he did.

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And so that’s how the world ends,

With a question.

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We have to start appreciating the irony in every adaptation of Frankenstein not fully capturing the essence of the original novel.

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I love Pinterest because it’s like “here’s this thought or image you felt be created in your head many months ago, here it is materialized by hands who have never touched you yet captured you like your creator. And now you can frame it and idolize this thing you never had the guts to extent outside your mind on your own.”

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She was a “I’m just a child but I’m not above violence” and he was a “I still dream of violence” and together they both found the center of the tornado.

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My gender is Hozier’s high note.

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In the Morning I wake up next to the love of my life who swells my heart

At Noon I hurry along the sidewalk while the pretty boy with no brains who I kissed once or twice tries to push a moment

In the Afternoon I take the same train with my childhood crush who touched me in all the wrong ways

In the Evening I pick up my dinner at the same place where a guy who neither I nor him fell in love but fucked a bunch

And in the Night I dream of the one who got away

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Before you write that poem, ask yourself:

Is this what I want future generations to associate me with?

Would an English teacher praise me for it?

How much of this will reveal my sexuality?

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Henry Winter talking about himself.

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As the summer comes to an end, as the heat dies down and the light fades with a quickness,

I find myself still at a loss for words, what do I have to show for it all? Sun kissed skin and a new back tattoo? No, no, skin alone won’t do.

But I cannot unravel either, unraveling would mean unbecoming, and though I now live in a society in which walls are glass, my truths are not of the reflected sorts that these glass panels wish to mirror.

Before you know it, you are one step away from being a separate thing that you have been for the last seven years of your life, and what to do with all that step? You ask yourself shall you leap? Stay suspended in the air? It’s no good, your feet will kiss the ground eventually, and much like water, you can never conquer the same step twice.

Before you know it, there is a display of choices in front of you, all bright purple juicy grapes glistening back at you, ready to practically burst out of their own skin just to meet your taste buds, so sweet that it delectably borderlines bitterness.

And without much warning they are no longer the choices laid before you, no longer a heap of which you may only pick one from.

Both of you charge at one another, entangled in a grotesque affair of committing treasons and heresies, licked in slick sins that are not so washable, they aren’t possibilities, they are now your committed crimes.

I found myself in an open field with all of them in my lap, running down my chin, falling down my throat. No longer were these choices laid before in my next big step, they weren’t even the trails left behind me, they had built upon themselves like a wall set deep in my belly.

The choices tested before my eyes were now the decisions I have to hide with lies upon lies, somewhere within the veils of morality and the borders of humanity, the paths I swore not to take and the history of who I am became one, as for my conscious soul, I dare not speak of her occupations within those hours.

What do I have to say for the summer,

I took a drag or two that I felt trickle like honey in my lungs, I felt the finer burn of sweeter juices and laughed out the taste, I found other ways than just my mouth to kiss lips, and I popped opportunities in my mouth like they were sugar laced pills, yet I am not without disease.

But it’s nothing to write home about

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Remember when you were little and asked an adult when you’d go to heaven and they say not for a very very long time. Do you ever hear that same chant in your head when you commit minor sins?

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Mother do you think the version of you from the parallel universe who is gentle with me, didn’t scream about nooses in my face at seven, who held onto me a little bit tighter and didn’t stop seeing me as a child once I turned eleven would tolerate how you’re treating me here? Mother I’m asking you a question!!!

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Are we absolutely sure that Plato’s cave is not just God’s tummy.

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Does anyone else see the parallels between Ethel Cain and Cain from the Bible? Aside from the obvious lore that Ethel Cain is a descent of Cain from her mothers line I feel like this part of the long Janie really parallels and displays how history is repeating itself through the character of Ethel Cain.

It is believed amongst some that Cain, the first ever murderer who is mentioned in the Bible, was cursed by God as a punishment for killing his brother Abel to never die and roam the earth forever, never being given the relief of forgetting the sin he committed.

Which can relate to the line “you’ll keep changing, I will stay the same.” Meaning that Abel was, in a tragic way, able to transition from life to death, and though Janie does not literally die in the same way Abel does, to Ethel her presence dies in her life by becoming hateful and jealous when she got a boyfriend, much similar to when Cain grew envious of Abel when he was favored by God. Though it’s not entirely mirrored of one another, the emotional aspect and the way in which Ethel held Janie in regard to her life is in a way similar.

Another part that shows Ethel’s persistent relation and ties to Cain is the line “turn the page to find it blank except for my last name.” When we think of Cain, all we think of is the sinning murderer, the jealous and murderous older brother. Ethel only seeing her last name be what is left of her can be seen as her legacy and curse being what rules and defines anything she does, she can relate to her relative who is only remembered for jealously and wrongdoing, which may be how she worries Janie will remember her, the one person she truly felt loved and safe with.

And finally the closing line for the song which sings “I know you love her but she was my sister first.” In this line when relating it to Janie and Ethel, Ethel is talking to Janie’s new boyfriend and though he may love her and have her now, she was her best friend first, so close she was felt like sisters, and shows the sadness she feels to losing someone she loved as a sister over a new chapter Janie was stepping into, one Ethel could not follow. This can relate to the Biblical characters such as God favoring and through Cains eyes “choosing” Abel over Cain, though they were brothers first, once they were chosen by God they lost their bond.

In a way this line can also relate to Genesis 4:9 in the Bible which reads “am I my brother’s keeper?” Which Cain replies to God when asked about Abel, avoiding to admitting to the murder which he had committed. Ethel can be saying “she was my sister first” as that’s how she keeps Janie in her mind, her best friend, her safe place, her sister. In a way God and jealousy may have been what tore Abel and Cain apart, but they were brothers first. Ethel and Janie, before everything, were sisters first.

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“Tomorrow isn’t promised” you fool!!! What makes you think that your witness and testimony are what materialize tomorrow, and ensure that the future is set in stone? There are a million yesterdays you never breathed in, and a million more tomorrows that will never know the print of your foot. If you think your gaze upon a land is what keeps the grass growing, I feel sorrow for the world that is behind your head, for you must think it’s not once out of earshot, don’t you? You are not a promise of tomorrow, you are what may not see things through, tomorrow has no unfinished business, nothing it’s not seen, no time to fear. Tomorrow has a grave just for you, and it has all the time in the world to offer a million more to a million others once you’ve long occupied it.

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I have a Pinterest board titled “probably blasphemous” and there I save every Anais Nin quote and Bunny Corcoran & Henry Winter post I can find.