Jason Myers

How To Make A Body

Genesis 2

Then tried to make
in my body

a home of what my body felt

which was a combination of saffron & sadness.

The way a voice

moving from mouth to ear

trawls the longing distances of echo                          of echo.

By saffron I mean both the color
& the flower that offers its red threads to give,
when boiled, paella & risotto their umber deep.

Some feelings need an application of steam to find their fifth essence.
In my body: echoes of the bodies my body has been. Of feelings unformed, unfelt, unfettered.

It was the rough edge of spring.
Black birds bathed in a creek not yet condos.

How generously the water moved
over the green rocks
how meekly the rocks said thank you, come again.

Someone I love much was dying.
Someone I love much had just been born.

The earth hinges. My body is a hunch, a guessing game.
On the other side of the creek,
the grass was of such brightness it seemed each blade was lit from within.
All language variations on to gleam.

The feeling that started this poem is gone.

Each feeling a residue of a place remembered, a sun set.
My body a simulacrum of necks, lips, calves nestled. Of echoes ached in baths.

Little streams pass’d all over their bodies.

In the second account of Creation,

God gathers a handful of dirt &

breathing

makes Adam.

There was no one to work the ground.

I will not eat a burger, I say as I sit in my car in the P. Terry’s drive-through.
Then allow myself the revision: I will not eat two burgers.

Hunger is the body’s syllabus. There are tests & tests & tests.

The first time I put my mouth at the opening of another body
was years before I went to school.
I asked for her mouth, she asked for mine, we vowed, we devoured
the time that was in our veins, our legs, the breathed-upon dust we have become.

Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east.

Now the hillside is a mess of irises.

Now the pawpaw in my throat.

Now hair, washed & washed, testing, testing.

Who has never left a garden has never written a word.

When I plant, with my convoluted hands,

an olive tree, I expect

no fruit

for years.

Jason Myers is Executive Director of EcoTheo Collective and Editor-in-Chief of EcoTheo Review. A National Poetry Series finalist, his work has appeared in American Poet (introduced by Campbell McGrath), The Believer, DIAGRAM, Image, The Paris Review, West Branch, and other journals. He became a licensed minister at Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta and is ordained in the Episcopal Diocese of Texas. He lives with his family in Houston.