SNAKE YOU SHALL EAT
Matt Zambito
“So the Lord God said to the serpent, ‘Because you
have done this, ‘Cursed are you above all livestock
and all wild animals! You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust all the days of your life.’”
—Genesis 3:14, NIV
Sure, the snake slithered us into sin: we
wouldn’t put the damned fruit back (we
still adore the juicy knowledge) if we could.
Sure, I stomp rattlers, turn them into boots,
or kick sand in their mouths, fatten them up
for Thanksgiving. Sure, we sew shocking “s’s”
over the dirt of our histories: substantial spans
of slavery, September 11th, Shang Dynasty. So,
since God’s honest and God’s honest
truth is love noosed around our necks, please
stick candles in my snake for wishes,
those birthday supplications. I’ll expand
my stomach with sweet asp. Yes, we’re dust.
To the snake, we pray, we shall not return.
Author Bio
.png)
Matt Zambito is the author of The Fantastic Congress of Oddities, and two chapbooks, Guy Talk and Checks & Balances. New poems are forthcoming in swamp pink, Tampa Review, Heavy Feather Review, Slipstream, The MacGuffin, and elsewhere, and he is the recipient of awards and fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council, the Greater Columbus Arts Council, and the Academy of American Poets. Originally from Niagara Falls, he has lived in Ohio, Idaho, Washington, and New York, where he now resides with his rescue dog, Sadie.