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First Miracle

By A. E. Stallings b. 1968

Her body like a pomegranate torn

Wide open, somehow bears what must be born,

The irony where a stranger small enough

To bed down in the ox-tongue-polished trough

Erupts into the world and breaks the spell

Of the ancient, numbered hours with his yell.

Now her breasts ache and weep and soak her shirt

Whenever she hears his hunger or his hurt;

She can’t change water into wine; instead

She fashions sweet milk out of her own blood.

Source: Poetry (January 2012).

Biography

A. E. (Alicia) Stallings studied classics in Athens, Georgia and has lived since 1999 in Athens, Greece. She has published three books of poetry, Archaic Smile (1999), which won the Richard Wilbur Award; Hapax (2000); and Olives (2012). Her new verse translation of Lucretius (in rhyming fourteeners!), The Nature of Things, is published by Penguin Classics. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and . . .

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