The Atlantic | May 2003 | Amateur Iconography: Resurrection

Contents | May 2003

More on poetry from The Atlantic Monthly.

The Atlantic Monthly | May 2003

Amateur Iconography: Resurrection

by A. E. Stallings

.....

Jesus is back—he's harvesting the dead.
He's pulling them up out of the dirt like leeks—
By the scruff of the neck, by the wispy hair on the head,
Like bulbs in darkness sallowly starting to grow

From deep down in the earth where the lost things go—
Keys and locks, small change, old hinges, nails.
(That's why the living beseech the dead, who know
Where missing objects lie.) Jesus has a grip

On Adam by the left wrist—he will not slip—
And Eve, by her right. They're groggy and don't understand,
They died so long ago. With trembling lip,
Adam surveys the crowds of new people. And Eve

Looks up the emptiness of her limp left sleeve
For the hand that was unforgiven and is no more,
Ages since withered to dust, and starts to grieve
The sinister loss, recalling the heft in that hand

Of the flesh of the fruit, and the lightness at the core.

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A.E. Stallings is an American Poet who lives in Athen. Her first collection of poetry, Archaic Smile (1999), won the Richard Wilbur Award.