And behold, I Myself am bringing floodwaters
on the earth, to destroy from under heaven all flesh
in which is the breath of life; everything that is
on the earth shall die. Genesis 6:17 (NKJV)
when earth was young my godhood new I chewed regret
& chose flood for a reason I could rage at almost all creation
except my scaly loves bobbing in its wetsuit a fish isn’t evil
a bottlenose dolphin knows nothing of sin my bias lies hidden
in details phosphorescence invisible eyelids an octopus’s silky
mantle & smart skin water mammals blowholes for nostrils
brains sleeping in halves one hemisphere at a time even piranhas
eating their own mouths full of bite even the sleeper shark
feeding on whale fall lipid-laden flesh I rigged this hunger
for fat & rot my bipedal ones don’t envy their glitter gills fins
agency has no rope in the knot think how I flush land to lake
what I fashion afresh tabula rasa clean slate you chalk
–
Dayna Patterson is the author of Titania in Yellow (Porkbelly Press, 2019) and If Mother Braids a Waterfall (Signature Books, 2020). Her creative work and poembroideries have appeared recently in AGNI, Irreantum, The Maynard, and Tahoma Literary Review. She is the founding editor-in-chief of Psaltery & Lyre and a co-editor of Dove Song: Heavenly Mother in Mormon Poetry. She was a co-winner of the 2019 #DignityNotDetention Poetry Prize judged by Ilya Kaminsky.