by Caroline Plasket

by Caroline Plasket

Once, my body was the Red Sea,
and I was Moses, only Moses was

a woman and she screamed into the water,
and it split unilaterally. From her

midline she pulled with an arm, not a staff,
the head of humanity. She cradled the warm,

red life with intention—the way
a midwife feels for the cliff of fundus. And then

the waters closed. There was the salty
expanse of sea—they were on

it, not in it, and her body was bread. Was Jesus
the myth of a woman who softened under

the delicious, pink, wet pallet of life,
in the milky ocean of saliva? We have

drifted        the slow evolution to the shore. Where
the child faces me

before drinking me into herself.

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Caroline Plasket's poems have been published or are forthcoming in The Atticus Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Orange Blossom Review, Compose, IDK, and Stirring, among others. She was a fall 2016 mentee in the AWP Writer to Writer Program.