GAIA by Lynn Kong

Gaia needn’t travail, she dines,

ingests fingers and whole mythologies

of motherhood and torpor. We ask her,

what is it, this orange thing called suffering?

Why did you have to make

bewilderment out of your first slumber,

out of your tasseled thrashings with the sky?

Why can’t we smile? You have

made eternal Niobes of us all, now we’re vanities

dueling with self. Tell us, what are we to do

with the eyes that own our skulls? Please

give birth to your own tears, tears for the tumors

that rub against our lives with tulip lust for you, Gaia.