Poem of the Week: Venus Thrash

Abortion in the Garden of Eden 

Deep in the heart of the Garden of Eden,

past the Euphrates & Tigris riverbanks,

the marsh grass, reed beds, bulrushes,  

the rough-leafed black mulberry's

sweet purple fruit, the sour pomegranate's

brief bloom, the pistachio, split open to green

tart flesh, the date palm's intoxicating wine,

its meaty drupe, twilight's first meal, breaking

fast for Ramadan, its fanned leaves laid across

the Way of Suffering at the soles of Jesus' feet;

past the olive's anointing oil, burnt offering

in holy temples, the opulent branches crowning

victors of wars, the remnants sealed 3000 years

in Tutankhamen's tomb; past citric lime's aromatic

pulp, the fig's feminine flower, the pubescent

apricot, akin to the peach, its erogenous nectar,

healing stone; past clusters of grapes, violently

lush, mellowing on overcrowded vines, sugary

cinnamon artlessly hewn from the bark

of evergreens; past Aphrodite's succulent

quince, bewitching to Atalanta,whose sworn

virginity to Artemis was felled by the tempting

pome; past stiff-necked tulips, night-blooming

jasmines, blood-stained hyacinths, deep-rooted

camel thorns, willows in the rivers' midst,

the Tree of Life vowing immortality; past the Tree

of Knowledge of Good & Evil, damning

womankind, stands a wild row of herbal shrubs

eclipsing shady corners of a disillusioned

paradise; bastard hellebore, brewed by witches

to summon forth demons, or blood, cures hysterics,

women screaming, running naked through the streets;

common rue, Herb-of-Grace, constricts the womb;

birthwort for snakebite, seeds, contraceptive,

tea leaves purge the embryo; bitter waters,

fed to a pregnant wife, testing infidelity,

branded adulteress, disavowed if she miscarries--

that if Eve had not eaten the fateful apple,

she never would have known--

what knuckleheads Cain & Abel,

how demanding raising civilization

can be, how the curse of painful labor proves

God's vengeance is exacting, how envy

drives the hearts of men to murder.

 

-Venus Thrash 

Used by permission.

From The Fateful Apple
(Hawkins Publishing Group, 2014).

Venus Thrash has had poetry published in Gargoyle, Beltway Quarterly, Torch, and the Arkansas Review, and in the anthologies Spaces Between Us: An HIV/AIDS Anthology, Full Moon on K Street: Poems About Washington, DC, Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem's First Decade, and Haunted Voices, Haunting Places: An Anthology of Writers of the Old and New South. She has read at the Studio Museum in Harlem, The Schomburg Center for African American Research, and The Library of Congress. She is a professor of fiction and poetry, and a mother. Thrash was a featured poet at Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness 2012, and just released her first book, The Fateful Apple, in 2014.

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