Lilith

The Authorized Artifacts of Lilith

Exhibit I:
A tattoo of Jehovah’s name
over her razor sharp left
clavicle.

What they said about me was inadequate.
Someone had to get there first. I was put here first.
See my footstep here? Two wells joined by a high arch.
It is sold for the privilege to light on this spot,
dirty your sole, slip it back into your
sock, your shoe, your sandal;
the sand biting, insidious as pollen on the back
of a wing. Til you wake, middle of the night,
dig your teeth into your husband’s
shoulder, your lips grinning and the knowing,
the knowing in your head burning, hot, hot.

Exhibit II:
Two missing ribs discovered
in a high bird’s nest in the Andes,
solid as titanium.

His name came to me like a pulse knocking
on the door of my hips, my hips rocking,
untamed, knowing. What they said about me was in
adequate. My bones would not burn and though
heat kissed every femur and tibia and my hair
fumed with oil, my eyes hard as stones, my flesh
crisp as dried camel tongue, they could not burn me.
Shivering, they huddled him with Eve and punished
men to shiver always, to burn and never cool.
It is not enough.

Exhibit III:
Thrush fetuses nested in
blossoming dogwoods
every spring.

Eve bore him sons. Though my child is lost. Still born.
Eve bore him. Eve succumbed.
The knowledge pouring through her like mercury
lighting her inside. Inside me, Adam had lit, curled
night and day, earth, water, and fire. What they
said about me, fire. Yelling fire. The cry – to
burn. Fire. Blue cooling to burnish yellow, nostril flare,
horse running, red rising to snap the air. Cain. Abel.
Inadequate. The wife over the hill, my daughter.
Not Abraham, but I. More than the stars
my children’s bones.

Exhibit IV:
Scrolls sleeping
in the Gondwana
sands.

They found my likeness in the lost city,
narrow burning rock passage,Bedouin women
turn my image to the wall; the wall will crumble.
What they say about me
is inadequate. A bit of fire burning in the brain is
my foothold, my talisman, my privilege.
To sit like a smoldering ember between your ears, your hips, wetting with spit and blood, icing to heat, ruining civilizations,
one beautiful sole with sand on the heel
after another.