And the Lord called to man, and He said to him, “Where are you?” —Bereishit 3:9
In the beginning we clock out & rev our Camaros
until the red lights down Market Street go green. Oh reverse
ripening, we grow farther & farther
from our sweet spots until, back home,
we fill our baths & knock knock—
Who’s there? “Do you have time to talk?”
Do you have time to talk
who? “Do you have time to talk about
the Lord?” Missionaries never
get us off. “In the beginning — ” We point to mezuzahs,
lock up the doors, slide over the chains,
get in our tubs, crack open some Coors & then
knock knock in the beginning
we read Roth in the bath,
his books all the same: “Those who tempt you
with fruit are, by the end,
going to make you
get nose jobs” knock knock In the beginning
there is shit-tons of darkness then
light then infinite grapes so wine
is real cheap like Franzia a week
of its goodness & then drunk in our tubs so suddenly
struck by our bodies we’re asked
like Adam “Where are you” & we speak of Ohio
as Roth spoke of Newark
until the voice interrupts from some awful distance,
“ — and who told you that you are naked?”
Allison Pitinii Davis, PhD, is the author of Line Study of a Motel Clerk (Baobab Press, 2017), a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award’s Berru Award for Poetry, and Poppy Seeds (Kent State University Press, 2013), winner of the Wick Poetry Chapbook Prize. She holds fellowships from Stanford University’s Wallace Stegner program, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the Severinghaus Beck Fund for Study at Vilnius Yiddish Institute. Her poetry appeared in Best American Poetry 2016, POETS.org, The New Republic, and elsewhere.