Lilith

And so the angel said to me:
your role in Eden is to be...
a housewife, Lilith!
Housewife dear.
Your role in Eden is to be
a housewife for Adam.

(The Holy Nag,
his garden wench, queen of the middle distance,
my crown bedewed with parsley leaves.)

Attached with painter's care
to Adam's back,
our spines a Chinese finger-trap
of interlocking muscles, bones -
the gory mortal tissue bound
as tight as any bridal band -
I trembled like a gross ingrate.

We tore like dead Rabbinic scrolls
which stain the mocker's hands with blood.
The scream of Adam rang,
a sound the bells of Sheol make
from that day down to this.

I left him bleeding in the grass,
the moonlight through the trees
his nurse. And where the snapping, bleeding farce
that was my spinal column crouched,
feathers of the deepest blue -
a mother's stove, the cooking hue -
emerged and knitted wings, twitching like animals.

Like Orpheus at his beloved,
as my wings lifted me I glanced
at Adam face down in the grass,
his spine repaired by unseen hands,
his twitching eyelids gently stilled,
and at last a rib removed,
which hovered in the air before I looked away.

I journeyed through the stars.
I have not yet encountered Eve. The lonely woman waits outside.