Alice Friman
First Blood
1. Cain
It was a low stagger to his knees—
the blow no linen could bind,
no scab heal. Rolled up
in the scroll of first narratives,
that story was ours, our script,
our blueprint for tragedy. But
what was the cause, the reason
for the hissy fit that initially
lifted high the club: the straw
that broke a brother’s back?
The vagaries of a mother’s kiss
or the slap of a crazed father
doomed to live in the loss
of high clover and an apple
on every tree? Or both.
Oh Wanderer—ancestor
of us all who can’t go home again—
since you walked this earth, one child
has always carried the pain, chewing
the inside of his cheek, biding his time.
2. Abel
He was his mother’s favorite,
his father’s despair and shame. Artless
and simple, content to sleep outside
with the sheep, curled nostril to nostril
breathing in their oblivion.
Unlike his brother, he never learned
to toughen up. His only defense—
the indestructible shield
of his mother’s morning kiss
tasting of Eden. Sweetface,
she’d call him, running her thumb
down his cheek. My apple dipped in honey.
Sometimes while milking or plucking
burrs out of wool, he’d raise his head,
sure he heard the rush of angel wings.
But Cain, who knew better, being older,
frowned, saying it was only sparrows
in the hayloft, flitting in and out,
there where the sun gathers its light,
shafting down like an accusing finger.
He did not see the blow coming,
the looming shadow raised above him.
But Christ—who wasn’t born yet—watched
from the back of God’s eye where he lived
and saw through the little black hole
this wide-eyed dumbling, a rosy boy
dearer than the lamb he cradled to his chest.
A lamb himself, a mother’s darling. The pulse
beating in his neck, throbbing for the sacrifice.
3. Seth
She buried her love for Abel
in the recesses of her heart, then
closed the door. Of the other
she never spoke. When it was time
to begin the begetting, she was given
a replacement. Had she a choice,
she’d have fancied a girl, someone
to talk to. But when had she ever
been given a choice? Except—
as Adam kept reminding her—
when that talky fellow, that glittery
creature sidled up to her and . . . .
but then the vision fades, shreds
like the tail end of a dream. Besides,
there’s dishes to be done and a baby
to be rocked. And if she rocked him
haphazardly—he being a substitute,
a compensation—he didn’t seem
to mind. He grew up wiry, healthy.
Kept his room clean, milked the goat,
mucked out the barn. His father
tolerated him. His mother checked
his fingernails before he left for school,
patted his head. Signed his report cards.
What warmth he needed he found
in paper, pencil, and adding things up.
A natural in mathematics and geometric
progressions, reciting to the birds
his beloved multiplication tables
while weeding the garden, hoeing the peas.
But one evening in his fifteenth year
he came home troubled, having watched
the ram ramming against the side slats
of his pen, snorting and sniffing the air.
The ewes restless in the field and itchy.
And he, not able to look away.
He told his story at dinner. His mother
and father looked at each other
then put down their forks.
Somewhere a clock started ticking.
Somewhere a calendar turned a page.
So it was written.
Eve reached to the fruit bowl
in the middle of the table, selected an apple—
Empire red as the inside of God’s mouth—
and rolled it across to her son.
Putting Two and Two Together
First they dragged the night table
out from between the twin beds and
quietly quietly pushed them together,
then, careful to avoid a noise, lay down
under the ceiling fan, giving in
to the sweet flooding of the flesh.
After, they joked about the plastic tree
in the corner, how, playing Adam and Eve,
that dusty relic must be a stand-in, not for
the wisdom tree but for the other: God’s tree,
lest they eat and live happy forever.
This, the opening page of a longer story
begun in a rented room of love talk
and muffled cry. A far cry (or was it?)
from the original story: that sixth-day,
once-upon-a-time story when the earth
cracked, spewing forth all manner of beast
and crawly, creeping thing. Imagine
the noise, the bellows and bleats, the thunder,
the hammering rain to make the mud to make
the man, slashed by a burning fork of lightning
in his side, the woman screaming to get out.