Poems
Sally Rosen Kindred

No Eden

Sad pear, God gave you
no fine story. Eve walked right past
your twilight body

unaware of how her teeth might break
into your bristling ashen
river, then slip kicking

and go under. You hang now
over the crumbling lake
off Highway 6 through

Branchville County, which is
no Eden. You listen
for falling in some dim field,

for angels unbuckling
their crimson ladders.
You are my lost fruit,

my mother's cheek before
she taught me hunger.
You are her body wobbling

in lake light where angels
won't throw their garnet ribbons down.
Pear of bitter thirst, pear

of the beloved lips of dusk,
turn your cheek to me.
You are what my teeth remember.