American Atheneum

Joe Wrobel

Martyr: Michelangelo's Next To Last Judgement

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A pen-and-ink drawing of a tall tree with a snake coiled around its trunk

The spent condom of your flayed skin
Untimely ripped won't buy your way in
To any Heaven worth having. Split
Your own skin from the inside. There's more wit
In trespassing Eve than all that's writ
In canticles; the uncarved Slave
Emerging from his stone more brave
Than archangels. Give us just a start-up
Garden, and at its heart
One central Tree, and our sinistral friend
The Old Uncoiler, pushing this life through again,
Again, again, again, again.