Against Teleology
(a collaborative poem with Simone Muench)
They made Eve an event, a teleology
we’ve teethed too many mouths upon, jawing
uneven through supposed apple skin. We’ve
seeded and ceded enough. Enough gnawing
on our bones by canonized men. Let fang
become fallout, reverse this ache, this sorry.
Let bees shimmer inside our eyes instead
of men’s glory. Let’s mouth a modern story
revise every exodus, each line of dread
they put upon us in sackcloth or satin.
We took the garden with us, now the gavel
is our godhead. We’ll not be suckled or bled
to ghosts again. We’re the heart’s rattle,
razored at our core. Full of sharp. Full of sheen.
Published in The Journal and in the anthologies The American Sonnet: An Anthology of Poems and Essays (University of Iowa Press, 2023) and Between Paradise and Earth: Eve Poems (Orison Press, 2023). Also in our collaborative book, The Under Hum (Black Lawrence Press, 2024).
