Bio

 
Photo of

Norman Klein has published in Ploughshares, The Beloit Poetry Journal, and EPOCH. He has published 15 poems so far this year. He has taught in Boston and Chicago, and now lives and writes in the woods of New Hampshire.

 

Trigger Warning

God is a woman,
the world her mirror,
her tigered jungles,
her deserts of ennui,
her peaks and valleys,
her plain old plains –
her eclectic motif.

Her ponds,
the weed-dimpled shards
of her ice age,
The Great Lakes her wish
for warmer and deeper,
the oceans her tearful swings
between exultation and grief.

Then there is her Eden –
not the original sin story
that pins everything on Eve.
There was no Satan or snake,
no expulsion or deception,
no soapy scene of seduction
no guilt-ridden comic relief.

The truth is that Adam was a
first draft and Eve her masterpiece,
a woman who knew her apples,
who was expected to outgrow
her garden, and know enough
to leave needing nothing
not even a fig leaf.

Leave a Reply