Kirsten Kaschock
In One Beginning
- a mirror was the onliest carnage. Its oval
- begged at its edges (a waterhole will
- obscure predation). Its oval begged
- and begged and the birds came
- first and then the wildebeests. Finally, man
- augured at mirror as mud. What it was
- was most truculent silver-white, but
- these did not know New England snow
- nor would they. When the birds flew
- over it congregations, fish schooled it
- beneath. When beasts leaned in
- to drink, huge jaws split the surface to feast
- en face. When men walked across, as still
- they could then at the beginning
- of the world, their soles echoed in women’s
- soles—women upside-down, women lengthening
- their hair with gravity, braiding it with movement
- of fish, seaweed, rivergrass. Then. One man
- reached down and cupped mirror, brought
- it mouthward in a kind of alcohol. This was
- the first kiss, the woman plucked and
- inverted. She sucked air, for her first time
- but found hard releasing what was
- insubstantial. The hole left beneath her by her
- swallowed men. Several, falling under, shot up
- women, until some of each were in each
- atmosphere and some halfway. Here, among
- the air, women move with grace, and used to
- thicker stuff, can hold their breath for lifetimes.
- But this, this has all been told from the top
- down. Underneath—the story goes—crocs were
- always waiting, fish doing their arithmetics, and it was
- women invented the mirror, inexplicably but on
- purpose, calling forth those who believe
- it is their thirst that brings into being water.