Erika Herman

The sculptor's uncut stone yearns for chisel and contour,
craves the hands of another to bring it into being.
The burning and longing in the night,
that thrashing into otherness, makes us,
carves faces into faceless stones.
Rodin made love to marble, showed us the future
of our flesh in The Gates of Hell,
the power to create in his study of hands,
the nakedness of Adam and Eve-those first stone carvers,
who passed chisels down through snake-like lines of offspring,
who we emulated last night, tumbling through twisted sheets,
pulling Cain and Abel through the birth canal of carnality,
becoming nocturnal Rodins, thrusting and pulling our chisels,

chipping away flakes of stone with screams,
and driving ourselves from the caskets of dust
to which we have been condemned.