Robin Rosen Chang
Apple
What if they’d never touched it,
never wanted to disturb the bees
swarming the orchard,
sticky before pollinating
the many fruit trees—fat figs,
blood oranges,
pomegranates so red
they made the apples look brown.
Some people say it was olives
they weren’t to eat.
Or seeds. Those sunflowers
in the garden—
a distraction! Adam wanted
to play hide-and-seek,
so Eve crouched
between the stalks
while he ran in circles,
searching wildly,
yoo-hooing every few seconds,
till he stumbled over her.
And who needed knowledge?
It was overrated—
thinking about free will,
existence, their role
in the garden. What was
the point? Perhaps
it had been wheat
they weren’t supposed to eat.
Gold, yes, but brittle,
husked and dry.
Or what if there’d been
no forbidden food?
All those sermons
and great art:
Michelangelo’s ceiling,
Bosch’s left panel,
Dürer’s engraving,
The Fall of Man,
Adam and Eve,
curls in their hair,
privates sheathed by giant leaves,
Eve receiving
a palm-sized globe
from that twisted serpent.
What if it had been a stone?
Riptide
My mother’s arm reaches
out of the water
and slides back in.
Then the other arm. Repeatedly,
they appear and disappear
as they move her through turbulent ocean.
She’s swimming diagonal to the shoreline,
almost like someone
caught in a riptide.
But she’s not. She’s going calmly—
of her own volition, retreating
from the beach where I lie.
I squeeze my shut eyes hard.
A sliver of her face
appears, a waning moon,
when her head turns
after every second stroke. Her mouth opens
just enough
to pull in air that holds life in her.
Fixed on something
she seems to see,
she keeps going.
She doesn’t struggle.
The current
doesn’t batter her.
It doesn’t carry her off.
She’s a white spot in the water—
She’s taking herself away—
Robin Rosen Chang
Robin Rosen Chang’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Michigan Quarterly Review, The Journal, Cream City Review, North American Review, The Cortland Review, Zone 3, and others. She was the recipient of the Oregon Poetry Association’s Fall 2018 Poet’s Choice Award and an honorable mention for the Spoon River Poetry Review2019 Editor’s Prize. She has an MFA from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.