Forty-three apprehensions,
forty-four apparitions
fell upon Eden and Sodom and Cush.
Women met Satan,
neighbors knew angels,
Cain fled away from the land of his birth.
The words, they are stark upon black-and-white page;
from them rise power, shame, and disgrace.
Labor pains, sodomy, a black mark and names
saddled their bearers and held taught the reins.
White men took letters and midrashed around them;
Sending old tales and black dogs to hound them.
Those who hold pens will always be victors
over the bitches, faggots, and niggers.
God breathed line-sketches; men filled them in,
colored with blood and ashes and sin.
Weak divine scripture faltered and fell
to the preachers and bishops who rushed forth from hell.
Anxious to consolidate power and wealth
they wove webs like spiders in darkness and stealth.
Embellishing God’s truth they changed all the stories,
sexed up creation, redemption, and glory.
EDEN
the human gasped a first breath; it was
bright and all the animals were
swarming curiously. God sat off to the side,
wiping sweat off their triune brows with muddy hands.
Later God put their heads together, then put their hands on
human’s head and sent him into the first sleep.
when the human awoke, there was a hole in its chest.
no, its chest was split in two. where was the rest of it?
now the man feels inadequate, and hungry, and frustratedly sad.
over there, in the tulips. she stirs, sighs, and wakes.
in her eyes is all the surety he’s been desiring.
God walks to them, smiling. “Look, now if you are lonely,
there is someone to talk to; now, if you are drowning,
there is someone to pull you out of deep water. Just do not
go seeking too much. You have all you need. You are all
you need to be.”
Snake is jealous and cunning. Snake’s own uniqueness has gone
unacknowledged in the shining face of the woman.
Snake falls upon them one day, twining sinuously from a branch:
“Would you, would you
like to be
more than you are?
Here, children, take and eat. You will not surely die. You can
be wiser and more beautiful than you are.”
They eat and they know and they are shamed
and they have trusted someone more than God, more than themselves.
They thought God would withhold delight,
they thought something else could pull them,
gasping and terrified,
from deep primordial waters.
The story is about not sex
not submission
not silence
but delight
recognition
and the delicate nature
of relation.
