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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)

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