To Build a Boat:
Do
men make boats the same way God
made
Eve, in that slow steam of a deep sleep’s seed?.
And
what of cast off dust that flutters
against
his lip then in the unzipped azaleas? And is
it the rib
men
spend themselves against the most, and the spine,
the
first salty clime they stroke, then time and time
into
surrender to recline, the sighing coax
of
a quiet lie, the divide, and then surprise: split ridge,
from
stern to sternum, how each ribbed pinion,
each
twin bone cheval framing the siren song is
that
crave of feet and hands on something solid,
each
pine sized and felled, tree after tree lying
stripped, skin
to heart, split.
Oh God: Oh Her.
Oh boat.
To
steam to curve enough
to
cure it with its companion rib—
Two
and Two and Two.
Then
Two and Two and Two. Soon labor’s a boat
bow
to stern for boys to float, heartthrob and lung-throb
retreat
resume, beating breathing briefly retreating…
Wonder:
did God, after taking Adam’s rib, hold it
to
his lip where words curved furious as steam, curved
as
She, Eve, came there, until they, God-She were split in
two,
until she was stamina and clavicle, scapula,
and
split wide pelvis, each her marrow-harrowed-bone
soldered
and sunk into its sheath
to
pitch to pine and skin, to rig each artery and vein
each
nerve her own sleep through that biblical day
she’d
breathe the way God taught her
in
His dream. And does she slide the way boats
slide
when
men arrive: released from her berth, slow going
until
the tide rises, glides up the sides, a palm on thigh…
all
that fuss and crack and fracture, bulging eyes until
the
stride resides in the sigh, until the wide
the
cautious pause before he’s full on
in,
her blurry surface of viscous heat, sea a blind
dividing,
a buckle and rub kneading into her
skin-rib,
the pull and push back, when the liquid parts
her
the way God did, with the skin, with the rib,
before
he set her alone,
adrift,
the
electric dust all sizzle and whisper in those unzipped
azaleas….
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