Skip to main content

Before & After

by Alfred A.Yuson

In the beginning
was the word before
it was made flesh
by assigning names
to a man, a woman,
and the first garden.

After which the habitat
became a commercial stall
where a sly serpent
sold the first apple
for a bargain between
a tree and the first sin.

Before the garden,
the apple, the sin
was the word
after which flesh
recognized an appetite
for temptation.

Before the fiction
was the need for words
to turn all sins
into a tree of knowledge
where man and woman
can climb one another.

And after, have a final
meal in the garden
before that turned
into a shopping mall
with a busy parking lot
for gods and serpents.

(Published in Dimsum, a Hong Kong literary journal, December 2006)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Phrases for Public Speakers at Sea

by M. B. Powell We ought, first of all, to note her oceanic eyes flecked with sea wrack. And we should pause to consider the wavy wilderness of her damp hair. I will not dwell on her cheeks ruddy under my thumbstrokes. I will not attempt to explain the shapely abalone shells of her ears. I wish to call your attention to the cunning animal of her mouth, muscular. I wish to say something about the mollusky dark language of her kisses. I am obliged to mention her sudden breasts, breaching, rhythmic. And I am perfectly astounded at her finger charting my lips round her nipple. Here, in this connection, let us notice her nipple against the roof of my mouth. Here, in passing, let us observe ...
2 comments
Read more

The Moonflowers

It's as if the dark, which had before just been context, gave to vulnerability a permission, almost: fleshy saucers of spilled cream, so many parchment fists, unfisting; and now, in pieces, the delicate mask of an indifference offered radically up against what, each time, seems as unthinkable, as unexpected, as when, in the long dream of retraction, that sea that is finally not a sea, but what else to call it, begins again its shifting, and though to every push of the will forward there's something noble—which is to say, something lonely, also—it's too late. Carl Phillips Speak Low Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Post a Comment
Read more

Discovery

I believe in the great discovery. I believe in the man who will make the discovery. I believe in the terror of the man who will make the discovery. I believe in the pallor of his face, the nausea, the cold sweat on his lip. I believe in the burning of the notes, the burning of them ashes, the burning of every last one. I believe in the scattering of the numbers, the scattering of them with no regret. I believe in the quickness of the man, the precision of his movements, his uncoerced free will. I believe in the smashing of the tablets, the pouring out of the liquids, the extinguishing of the ray. I assert that all will work out, and that it will not be too late, and that things will unfold in the absence of witnesses. No one will find out, of that I am sure, neither wife nor wall, not even bird, for it may well sing. I believe in the stayed hand, I believe in the ruined career, I believe in the wasted labor of many years. I believe in the secret taken to the grave. For me these words ...
Post a Comment
Read more