We started incomplete with Adam's splitting.
His cage was one rib short, but
he was still a whole-hearted man
when he found her already sitting
with a Serpent in the cool shade of sin,
and it was Adam splitting
his lips with her for a banned
fruit that drove what was once
a whole-hearted man
into plucking leaves and fitting
them over shame—not nude but naked.
But in the end it was Adam splitting
the labor of the land that began
our ending and enabled Cain
the first death of a whole-hearted man,
a death that sounded through ages,
loud as atoms splitting,
clear through myth and religion
and into a hole-hearted Man.
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Issue 61
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Editor's Note
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Poetry
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Fiction
Issue > Poetry
Bryce Emley
Bryce Emley is a freelance writer and editor and has served on-staff with The Florida Review, H_NGM_N, and BULL. His writing can be found in The Pinch, Yemassee, Pleiades, and other places, and his articles about freelance writing are posted regularly on Matador Network.Poetry
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