UNGODLY WOMAN
Platform Arts Gallery, 2020
Proverbs 23:27 - ‘For a whore is a deep ditch; and a strange woman is a narrow pit.’
In their 11th solo show, and second time exhibiting at Platform Arts, artist Frances Cannon presents Ungodly Woman. Frances reimagines biblical sluts, sex-workers, and victims of abuse through a modern feminist and queer perspective. Ungodly Woman features a number of tapestry-like works, juxtaposing holy and sinful, feminine and masculine, soft and hard. Ungodly Woman is both a celebration of these strong characters in such an important piece of religious literature, while still critiquing the treatment and expectations of women in a Christian religious context.
Ungodly Woman
I
I am made of flesh and bone
I am a deep ditch
I am a narrow pit
I slip my fingers into a succulent pomegranate and pluck out a single seed
I eat this sinful fruit and watch as the veins in my calves wriggle around like snakes
Satan slips her tongue into my ear and whispers sweet nothings
I wrap a strand of hair wrap tightly around my finger just to remember how it feels to delicately stroke her thigh
Slut
Shut the door and hope that she has the key
I carry my cross and pieces of wood splinter into my shoulders
But this ounce of pain is worth it to look dead into her eyes
Satan slips her tongue inside me and counts to 666
My father whom art in heaven
Shakes his head with shame but I
Can’t hide who I am anymore
I paint your toenails the colour of blood
My girl my girl why have you forsaken me
I type her name into the search bar on Facebook and maybe she’s blocked me
My god my god why have you forsaken me
II
Mary Mary quite contrary how does your garden grow
Gethsemane looks so beautiful in the moonlight, leaves shimmering like stars
Crystallised tears fall
Sapphires
Sapphic desires
Onto her feet and I wipe them tenderly with my hair
Womb tomb waiting in her room
Picking up bobby pins off her discoloured carpet as she clips her bra
Slides her fingers up her boot zip zip zipping
All the way past her ankles, her calves, past her knees and arriving neatly at her thigh
Slip slip slipping her fingers into the juiciest ripe fruit
Juice trickling down her chin
III
Eyes on me
As I walk home at night with my keys in between each finger
My knuckles turn white as I grasp them as tight as I can
A stream of blood flows from where my keys pierce the soft bit of my skin in between my ring finger and my middle finger
Two fingers, forever side by side - one to signify marriage and the other defiance
For so long I thought that there wasn’t a choice
Slip a golden band around my finger and tie me down to a man
Is it that same man that watches me as I speed walk towards the nearest shop and duck inside to make small talk with the lady behind the counter until I feel safe enough to walk the rest of the way home?
IV
Hello? Holy Spirit? I am but a poor girl asking for guidance in this big big world ruled by bad bad men. Bad bad men who line the streets as I walk wearing nothing or wearing everything it doesn’t matter I am only a vessel
Not all men! They shout at me, their spit landing on my face, flowing down my neck and between my breasts
Flowing down my stomach which is too big and my thighs which are too wide and my vagina which is not readily available enough
Witch or prostitute?
Burn her because she takes control of her body
Power oozes from every pore and as the flames lick around her
I’m on my knees worshipping the glory of a woman
V
I don’t believe in hell but even if I did it would be worth it for a taste of her tongue
The sky is light purple tonight that cascades into a pale pink
Like a pink tongue that’s been sucking on a grape lollipop
I flick through the pages of my battered bible
Looking for highlighted sections that teenage me marked
Looking for clues that part of me knew that I’m gay
I don’t find anything
Only the faint name of a boyfriend graffitied in a margin in the book of Samuel
How many layers and layers of lies did I wrap around myself year after year
Cocooning myself in heterosexuality
Or maybe more of a web
Wound around me by the pointy sharp legs of a spider
Who cares little about my desires and only cares to suck my soul dry until I’m normal
VI
She looks at me in my bedroom and I am 15 and she says she has a secret
And I wait for her to tell me that she’s in love with me but instead she tells me she’s been underage drinking
And I push that slight twinge of desire deep deep deep down inside me not to look at for another ten years
A butterfly lands on my nose and I slowly draw the rusty nail out from my palm and a sparkling river flows from the wound and nourishes the parched grass
The world begins to flood and the waters rise deep deep deep and I am Noah and my long beard reaches the ground and a rabbit nibbles on its tip
Thank you for the trim
I put my hairy arm around my wife’s waist and pull her close into an embrace
We will repopulate the earth with people who treat each other with kindness and don’t care that they have two mothers and one of them has a really long beard
VII
I come from a long line of very strong women
I imagine, sprouting out of the ground
A gigantic tree
Humongous and strong reaching up towards the sky where stormclounds gather
Each branch a woman, a person, whose blood runs in my veins like glittering snakes slithering through my body
I think of the mothers and the daughters, the sluts and the whores, the devout and the devious, the godly and ungodly
The beautifully queer who surpassed the odds and passed on their DNA down until it’s almost like their fingers touch my outstretched hand
Here, have this - they say
It sits there in my palm, shiny and soft like a newborn lamb
I am a lion, I am a lamb
I am as strong as an mountain but at the slightest brush of her lips I melt into a puddle
I call my mum up and the connection is bad and I tell her about my day
Look at you! My mum says. A little mustard seed!
Look at all this potential bottled up inside you ready to burst!
When you came into this world I filled you up with love and look how it pours out of you