The Book of the Body: Ribs

Ribs

It goes back, much further back than the fruit
Eve supposedly urged her husband to eat,
back to the rib
removed from his heart, man’s hatred of woman.

The opening of the flesh
in his side, the detachment of the bone from its tree,
and the closing up of the flesh
is a parody of the birth pang,

and when he calls her bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh,
what does he greet
but
his need to eat?

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