in the beginning,
before memory, before pain, i was a dormant
god created the heaven and the earth
egg in a fetal girl who slept in my grandmother’s womb—
earth without form, the mother of my mother of my mother is a god,
void, cloaked in a father’s name,
and darkness was donned like a marriage veil a funeral veil
upon the face of the deep
understand that i was holy
a divine cosmos reconvened
into milky streams twisting
slow through god’s lone dark
until he dipped his young hands
into me and took me
to his parched lips where i was
mistaken as a cure for his grief
his finger curves into a fishhook
a rib where i am netted to body
without body oh clay pocket
i am a framed and mounted ghost
sleeping near dirt without mouth
without i god births everything
ravenous even water
thirsts for moon reaching like
the worm who sculpts my waiting
mouth awaiting breath waiting
for return a buried rage to ignite
this body
ordered to the center
of a paradise garden
this body
still without name
these fingers
trace the rough bark of the thing
we named tree
this body still unnamed
so these are adam’s fingers, too.
two beings
of one body
of one god
expelling his breath
over all creation
the creature we called serpent
bellycrawls on the tree
like a baby
yes
a baby
everything we name
is precious
even hunger
Chel Campbell is a writer and collage artist living in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Catch some of her recent and forthcoming work in X-R-A-Y, matchbook, Blood+Honey, & elsewhere. They serve as EIC of MEMEZINE (@memezinelit) and assistant prose poetry editor at Pithead Chapel. Find them at @hellochel and say hey.
