by Tyler Chadwick
No ginger virgin, hands modest to sex and breast,
flesh fallow, fecund as sky gone to seed in the sea:
her father’s stones sickled into primordium,
become pit to her emanant pith—No escort ashore
on the zephyr’s hymned gestures toward Paradise,
wafted with rose hips come like souls wanting skin—
No velvet robes ready to sop up her mythology, to
keep her from burning her first day at the beach—
Just this Eve and her Adam, curling down currents
of dawn like leaves slipped from the knowledge tree,
flesh converging to vessel the easterly sighed downcanyon
when God realized they had grown restless
waiting for his newly charged cherubim to doze,
drop their swords, spill the tokens and signs
of his mystery as they dreamed, so the pair
streaked through asphodel fields instead, emerged
from under cover fig leaves into the blush of blossom
against bodies gnawing, gnawing at the edges of sky—
(After married by galen dara)
TYLER CHADWICK, an award-winning poet, essayist, and editor, received his MA in English from National University in San Diego, California. He is currently a doctoral candidate in English at Idaho State and he teaches writing at Weber State.
Painting: married by galen dara. Used by permission of the artist.
Psaltery & Lyre 