Lillian Sickler
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Lillian Sickler is a queer Chinese-American poet, writer, and birth doula currently living in the South. Her work can be found in magazines such as The Shade Journal, Crab Fat Magazine, Empty House Press, and Hobart, among others. She has a black cat named Junebug who is a Gemini-Cancer cusp.
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it was Lilith who first ate grief as a spondee
in the beginning I ate the snake.
I wasn’t hungry but she was made just like me
just like heartbeat nightgown ribmeat
and I coveted her like you coveted me let me explain.
I know I was a raft in my last life, my boards
rotting soft as sugar as I dissolved into juniper salt.
but in this life, I was cut clumsily from clay and slip
of tongue to suckle white milk until I could bite through
caul, feather, and thew. I balanced on wood only to cross it.
I married you and we kept every faucet
running in our house so God wouldn’t hear us fucking.
in this life there is hunger, one I know exists only
because I loved you.
before love there was the snake and always after
is the way the snake eats me back. whole mouth gulps down
my heart /break sunset birthday
great grief, I hate you even though you have
swathed my throat in untamable thirst and thus made me
into a drain let me explain.
if you’ve ever felt your chest tighten to ophidian coil
when your lover lays beneath you--
if you’ve ever put your famine on their
famine and fast on their fast
and allowed love to pump
you full
of hunger
until you
go blue as
slack and rancid
with
want
then you’ll know why I devoured the snake.
why I have her flay me open like opaline fish
disembowel and deprive and remove everything
that dares to want what is not snake
I wasn’t hungry but she was made just like me
just like heartbeat nightgown ribmeat
and I coveted her like you coveted me let me explain.
I know I was a raft in my last life, my boards
rotting soft as sugar as I dissolved into juniper salt.
but in this life, I was cut clumsily from clay and slip
of tongue to suckle white milk until I could bite through
caul, feather, and thew. I balanced on wood only to cross it.
I married you and we kept every faucet
running in our house so God wouldn’t hear us fucking.
in this life there is hunger, one I know exists only
because I loved you.
before love there was the snake and always after
is the way the snake eats me back. whole mouth gulps down
my heart /break sunset birthday
great grief, I hate you even though you have
swathed my throat in untamable thirst and thus made me
into a drain let me explain.
if you’ve ever felt your chest tighten to ophidian coil
when your lover lays beneath you--
if you’ve ever put your famine on their
famine and fast on their fast
and allowed love to pump
you full
of hunger
until you
go blue as
slack and rancid
with
want
then you’ll know why I devoured the snake.
why I have her flay me open like opaline fish
disembowel and deprive and remove everything
that dares to want what is not snake
Commentary
Lillian on “it was Lilith who first ate grief as a spondee”:
I am hesitant to explain this poem or to say what it is or isn't about. and to tell you the truth, the meaning of this poem has changed for me since I wrote it.
but at its bones, this poem is about grief and hunger.
think about tangle & writhe & tightness (picture something for a second; a memory of a person or a house or the golden hour oozing over hay bales in August. feel what I mean?). when I decided to write this poem, I wondered how tanglewrithetightness got there. if someone had put it there or if I had been born with it.
I wonder if you could eat a snake because you love it (or because there is nothing else to eat). but then what do you do when you realize that you cannot get rid of the snake because it has become a part of you? when the snake's survival has somehow become linked to your survival?
because sometimes grief is the hungriest part of me. and sometimes I find solace in feeding it.
Supervising Editor Zora Satchell on “it was Lilith who first ate grief as a spondee”:
The snake in the Christian creation myth symbolizes temptation. As the story goes, it was the snake that tempted Eve to defy God and eat from the tree. The myth of Lilith puts the passive rebellion of the snake in stark contrast. Instead of being lead into temptation, Lilith defies God to his face, before walking out of the garden of Eden. Both symbolize defiance, rebellion, sin and with the first line “In the beginning, I ate the snake” our speaker presents Lilith and the snake as mirroring creatures of grief. For the speaker of our poem, to love is to covet, to consume, to run the faucet so God may not hear the carnality of her want. The snake must be consumed.
I am hesitant to explain this poem or to say what it is or isn't about. and to tell you the truth, the meaning of this poem has changed for me since I wrote it.
but at its bones, this poem is about grief and hunger.
think about tangle & writhe & tightness (picture something for a second; a memory of a person or a house or the golden hour oozing over hay bales in August. feel what I mean?). when I decided to write this poem, I wondered how tanglewrithetightness got there. if someone had put it there or if I had been born with it.
I wonder if you could eat a snake because you love it (or because there is nothing else to eat). but then what do you do when you realize that you cannot get rid of the snake because it has become a part of you? when the snake's survival has somehow become linked to your survival?
because sometimes grief is the hungriest part of me. and sometimes I find solace in feeding it.
Supervising Editor Zora Satchell on “it was Lilith who first ate grief as a spondee”:
The snake in the Christian creation myth symbolizes temptation. As the story goes, it was the snake that tempted Eve to defy God and eat from the tree. The myth of Lilith puts the passive rebellion of the snake in stark contrast. Instead of being lead into temptation, Lilith defies God to his face, before walking out of the garden of Eden. Both symbolize defiance, rebellion, sin and with the first line “In the beginning, I ate the snake” our speaker presents Lilith and the snake as mirroring creatures of grief. For the speaker of our poem, to love is to covet, to consume, to run the faucet so God may not hear the carnality of her want. The snake must be consumed.
