This poem, which recently appeared in Ekstasis, is from a larger collection of unpublished poems entitled Between the Joints and the Marrow.

Moving Day

Did Eve ever talk about the past?

Did laughter ever spill out over her post-exilic teeth?

And when I woke up, God still had His mouth on my nose.

Or could Masaccio have opted to open his aperture at any other moment

And still have retrieved an image of our mother frozen salt-still in the grief of expulsion.

Phan Thi Kim Phuc leaving Eden,

Awaiting a greater covering.

Atonement hungry.