God saw that I was lonely.
He was right about that.
The rib thing, though—

consider the stars,

the firmament,
the beasts, fish,
birds, all that.

Don’t tell me he had nothing left.

What I saw
when I saw Eve—
her long hair, breasts,
the absence between her thighs
notwithstanding—
was me.

That was all right
until the business with the snake,
the rising of my desire.

–Andrew Merton,
Evidence We Are Descended from Chairs (2012)
Accents Publishing

Andrew Merton has been a political reporter and columnist for the Gloucester (Massachusetts)Times, The Boston Herald Traveler and the Boston Globe, and a contributing editor with Boston Magazine. His articles and essays have also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Ms. Magazine, Yankee Magazine and The Boston Phoenix. His book Enemies of Choicewas published by Beacon Press in 1980, and his anthology In Your Own Voice: A Writer’s Reader was published by HarperCollins in 1995. His poetry has appeared in The Alaska Quarterly Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Powhatan Review, Paper Street, The Comstock Review, Silk Road, Third Wednesday, The American Journal of Nursing and elsewhere. He teaches writing at the University of New Hampshire.