Genesis 29:10-11

Bring your good shoes—to
drink from me you’ll have
to sweat. My sisters are a flood,
water sloshing over their cleft hips.
Get your pitcher ready.

Or hollow my pitch, cousin.
No—call me lover.
Call me wife most pale, since
you and your god will not
ask if I am thirsty.

You just roll the stone
into my mouth and
kiss it. How pink
my shape of lips over
gravel, like           oh

husband mine and hers
and hers and hers I am
so grateful, for you’ll be so great,
with your crop of mandrakes,
and I’ll be so full of you,

night after night, pouring
your sons into my wine, praying
to drink of them again. I will
grant you two: one to lose
and another to lose

me. I will drown in my own womb,
call him Benoni, Benoni, that child of
sorrow. Drained at last, sloped into
your ground, this flesh will finally know
what it is to take up room.

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Lindsay Adkins is a current MFA candidate at Stony Brook Southampton and an editorial assistant with The Southampton Review. Her work has appeared in Sugar House Review, Sequestrum, Typehouse Literary Magazine, Gamut, Vine Leaves Literary Journal, and Right Hand Pointing, among others.