The Metaphysical Eve
So the Lord God caused the woman to fall into a deep sleep; and while she was sleeping, she took one of the woman’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. Then the Lord God made a man from the rib he had taken out of the woman, and she brought him to the woman.
The man said,
“This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
I shall be called ‘man,’
For I was taken out of a woman
The woman said,
I dedicate this poem to my mothers:
A line of women who swallowed their throats
Retreated
And hardened in their chests
Into the ribcage,
Amen, amen.
Washed melanin from skin
Fasted on dust and baby powder
Wore
Memory foam and calluses
Like silk lingerie
Circling crimson every month.
Whose mother
Spoke softly with a serrated edge
Of broken tongue and immigrant accent
Whose mother
Believed in God for the first time
When she returned to
Her war-torn country
And heard church bells
Calling her name, “Mother save me”
Whose mother
Grew a third eye on the back of her head
Which never blinked
But shed tears
Like splinters from an ancient tree
Hit by lightning
Whose mother
Was a name in the family tree
Whose mother
Gave birth to
Birds and heresies and mountains
And was executed by fire
Whose mother
Warmed the hearth
With laughter and sound
And aromas of fiery incense,
Whose mother
Built a house of spirits
And filled it with
Visceral echoes and stair creaks
Whose mother
Always gave
But never asked in return
Whose mother
Carved into her stomach to retrieve
A key to a chest
Whose mother
Was too pretty to be seen
Whose mother
Was born, looked into the eyes of her mother and
Screamed, not from the longing of milk, but from sorrow
Whose mother
Had the eyes of a mausoleum
Whose mother
Died during childbirth
Whose mother
Was the man who discovered fire
Whose mother
Wrote history on twelve stone tablets
Engraved the word “mother”
Pulled it out from the sky of the womb
Scorched stretchmarks on inner thighs
Whose mother parted the sea with her legs
Whose mother
Became mother to many mothers.
Whose mother,
Whose mother
Whose mother/Who is mother?
The mother gave a rib to every man who exited her.
It made a sound like the
Warm creak of the bedroom door opening
And left an exit wound shaped like an apple.
by EUNICE YUNKYO KIM