Mitochondrial Eve

ZOE WEISS

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

Let’s travel by the roadside dust,

follow the weeds—the carcass remains.

Wearing the heat a rocky path sheds like an extra skin,

hissing at our heels.

 

We pause by a windswept wood… ringed trees

Weave branches, spilling veins of light,

on bodies out-stretched, palms open, still, and pulsing.

 

Fingers laced along the salty shore of the Dead Sea, cupped to

Cradle the heat of language,

Bowed by arching rivers drawn in blue

floating stone and bronze and iron, now.

Clenched for labored exhalations; tangled into inexplicable tongues.

Still tied to proud corpses, singing in their sleep.

 

Now, here, in an ivory city, half deserted and nestled unaware,

on tiers of dirt and civilization, sun-streaming-seamlessly from behind.

We use only our hands, dirt pressed to the creases,

...trace a billion helices of unrelated clues.

an ilium, a tibia, a flake of rock—worth a hundred thousand years.

 

We lean their tools—against our towers.

Shading our upright hairless bodies from the scorching heat,

Still hissing at our heels.

​