Kathryn Levy: The Story of Apples

They peered at the apples

in the Apple Museum, or the half remembered

pictures of apples. And whispered about 

the apple pickers, slow-moving, unfearing,

who loaded the cartons onto the wagons

and spoke only of things they could make

with apples—apple pies, apple puddings, as if

nothing else mattered—and curled in their beds,

their hunger assuaged, their doors 

still unbolted. One said, I would love

just a taste of an apple. One

claimed they were sour, and

sometimes they rotted even before

the pickers could reach them. At

the end the apples shriveled while growing. 

At the end the pickers fought over remnants.

With nothing to gain the marauders

killed every picker, and were

killed in their turn by the

pourers of concrete, who bulldozed and bulldozed

the stinking husks of the apples. It’s more

efficient now that we only 

eat one another. —Or

that’s what one chanted, still stroking the painted    

surface of an apple. Red, Red—

they created a song for their mourning

and a god for their terror: The Implacable

God of the Apples. —He wants

no one to know what is coming next.

—No, said the father, rubbing his eyes,

I think he is finally sick of these battles—                              

all he wants is

no one.

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Copyright 2022 Kathryn Levy

Kathryn Levy‘s books include Reports (New Rivers, 2013). She lives in Sag Harbor, New York.