Originally published last year, this poem is a revision of “Creation”. 

You rested beneath Adam’s soft heel

upon the birth of Eden, raised him 

as he poised his clear eyes on rolling

fields lush with deep green grasses 

and polychromatic blooms, a garden

overflowing with crystalline waters 

and a nighttime spill of cool air. 

You witnessed the sacrificial nature of birth 

as Adam’s anatomy was undressed, 

layers of red, pulsating 

tissues and threadlike filaments

peeling away from a clean white 

bone, severed and translocated 

to Eve’s pallid body so 

mankind would have 

its love, have its enemy. 

You, born from the friction of rocks and 

wind, were swept into the pink throat of God’s 

daughter, and she coughed a hoarse, musical, heretic cry – 

slick with dew to catch the 

fragments of sun cast through 

the forest canopy, a serpent heeded – 

and you awakened sin, 

and you awakened life. 

You gulped up the sweet, 

lucid waves of the Tigris River, 

rested gluttonous and full 

on its balmy banks, gave in smoothly 

to the weathered hands that packed 

you tightly into the walls of Sumer. 

You, nothing but a piece of a piece of a 

brick that built civilization – 

You, the piece of the piece of the brick 

that civilization was built upon – 

You, melted skin disfigured 

by reeds, the fulcrum of life’s scale, 

lavished men with torment, 

lobbed the bony labyrinth ears off of 

smooth, brown, perfectly 

round heads, mutilated veiny, pulpy 

eyes and sunk them 

into Justice’s two hands. 

Yet, you drifted from an angel’s wing, 

gently dusted the puffy, 

pink cheeks of Mary’s newborn, 

spun a melodious babble

from his tears. 

You, softly illuminated 

in the mellow, fading light 

of sunset, warmed by 

unleavened bread, soused 

on the earthy aroma of wine, 

exchanged hands between 

disciples, and here in the 

Cenacle, you touched the 

body of Christ, and he 

touched you to his 

hollowed face. 

You, saturated by toil and sweat 

and grief, fell beneath swollen 

and blistered feet, and as Christ 

was freed from the earth, lifted 

upon the cross, a ravaged 

body uncoupling from its soul, 

You saw the face of Adam, 

and his face was placid and wet with tears, 

and he said nothing. 

You felt the heaviness of the miracle 

and the exhale of a faraway wind, 

and wondered that if God 

created the universe,

what was the difference 

between you and 

Him.