God, Creating the Birds, Envisions Adam

Detail from the North Porch of Chartres Cathedral

No feathers, no fins. Each thing he wanted

to outdo the last. How now could he

surpass these flowers of the air, his mind

already tired, his hands sore, his body

spent from shaping. Nothing less than himself

would do, he thought. His own image

in miniature, puppet, mannequin, mirror

that moves. Important now to forget the early

mistakes, jellyfish, plankton, platypus,

to focus on this final act of creation.

In the darkness he saved from his own

restless hands he drank the wine he’d created,

his only company the quiet angels of his mind.

He will have no wings. That night he slept

the troubled sleep of dreams. He saw faces

that mocked his own, fingers that picked

his skin apart, mouths that spat in the hands

that made them. His teeth will be like white

soldiers, angry and hard.

Early the next day, his eyes barely open,

his head still humming from the night before,

he scraped the flesh from his own face,

opened a mouth, pressed his thumb hard

into the wells of eyes, pulled up ears

and nose, stretched out torso, arms, legs,

fingers, toes. He worked for hours shaping

the supple curve of back, rounding the buttocks,

pinching the tight cup of prick and balls.

His hands will be like these, clumsy and precise.

At last he draped it over the white sticks

he cherished, dredged the life again

from his lungs, spat it into the mouth,

called it man, son of God, keeper of earth,

dropped it headfirst, naked, crying,

bruised and bloody to the ground.

Reprinted from Charlotte Poetry Review