Stephanie Ellis Schlaifer

NEO-BABYLONIANS

After two objects in the collection of the Saint Louis Art Museum: (1) “Foundation Cylinder with Record of Public Works of Nebuchadnezzar II,” terracotta, 604-562 BCE, Neo-Babylonian Period; (2) Relief with Winged Genie,” gypsum, 883-859 BCE, Assyrian, Neo-Assyrian Period, NW Palace at Nimrod, Iraq.

 We stood on the electricity of the moment
           No god to see that it was good                       No god to say so

 Seeing wasn’t believing                     wasn’t belief              
            But the mathematics of our offerings             The ratios

of water to gypsum        gypsum to sand        sand to hair        hair to walls        walls to
           blades       blades to cleave the olive from the olive branch  

 The consequence of our dwellings         ripened in the wilderness   
           Heads in hands          hands in anointing oils          a smooth cool plinth       

 upon which we lay our tenderness     —the pounds of flesh given
            to balancing things out                       Here is the cuneiform proof:

We ate the fruit but not the pit                      and the gods saw something
            you know that much at least          You know you hope they did

STEPHANIE ELLIS SCHLAIFER is a poet, installation artist, and the author of the collections Well Waiting Room (Fordham University Press, Editor’s Prize, 2021) and Cleavemark (BOAAT Press, 2016), as well as the children’s book The Cloud Lasso (Penny Candy Books, 2019). A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Schlaifer has published poetry, art, and criticism in AGNI, BOMB, Colorado Review, Georgia Review, Harvard Review, The Offing, Ploughshares, Washington Square,  The Wilson Quarterly, Colorado Review, and Ploughshares, and  through the Poetry Foundation.