The Garden of Eden
Tessa Calogaras (Massey University, New Zealand)
I do not want to play in your garden of Eden.
Pluck the sweet cherry apple from your tree,
Fill it with the white Christ evil that fills our core.
I do not want to play in your garden
But to walk naked with his creatures of
all colours, sizes, identities and terms
And marvel at our beauty.
Princess,
With your pink hair and overgrown beard,
You are Eden’s finest.
Who are they to say what is beautiful?
We are slaves in our garden of Eden,
Swimming in her curves.
We are not to touch her
Though we are evil creatures of moral standards and consciousness.
Ebony came and stole with it our ability of doing things without reward.
Firmly grasped by what’s right and wrong, yet still
We want to destroy her gaze with our rotting fruit.
There was murder in the Garden of Eden,
Slaughtered puppets who steal the night with misheard approval and
labels.
Child, you are not a bad person for wanting something that they did not.
The lion is not the devil for killing the deer.
He is not filled with vile for kissing the creature with death.
Though we will say it was evil as we pluck the fur from his mane
and wear it around our shoulders.
I have played in your garden of Eden,
And I have let the labels loiter my mind with judgement.
I have felt ashamed of my Father’s illness for that would make him weak
And felt disabled as a woman for no want of children and marriage.
Yes God, I have faced your garden, tasted the sweet nectar from your tree
and sinned in the eyes of Eden.
Tessa Calogaras is a 23 year old poet, working as a studio manager at a Wellington creative digital agency called *Experience. She first got into poetry as a way of therapy and loved how the use of metaphors and similes made these feelings feel more like cryptic messages and could be up for interpretation. Her dream would be to one day have her own poetry books; however, for now the most exciting thing for her is when people find her work and are touched by it.
