Genesis 1 by Kimberly Gibson-Tran

Genesis 1
by Kimberly Gibson-Tran

แผ่นดินโลกนั้นก็ปราศจากรูปร่างและว่างเปล่าอยู่ ความมืดอยู่เหนือผิวน้ำ 

 A world warps in the glass of proffered water. I take it with both hands, as someone taught me once. We are in a woman’s home, high on a mountain. My memories begin the slow drift back. The floor is hard-packed dirt, the color of rust, and out of the bamboo doorframe piglets run, grunting. My mom and her friend unfold a picture-book. The women read aloud the history. On the first pages, a swirling galaxy, a storm-rocked sea. Then a mouth, a dividing light.  

 พระเจ้าตรัสว่า “จงให้มีความสว่าง” แล้วความสว่างก็เกิดขึ้น 

 Through the slats of the wall I see a boy in a tree. The tree is dotted with fiery blossoms that lick in and out of the cracks of light.  

 “จงให้แผ่นดินเกิดต้นหญ้า ต้นผักที่มีเมล็ด และต้นไม้ที่ออกผลที่มีเมล็ดในผลตามชนิดของมัน” 

 I remember to step carefully over the threshold. Just outside, a wrinkled man reclines, sipping a giant pipe. His earlobe holes are the longest I’ve ever seen. Through the blue haze, he tilts his chin toward the flame tree, the kids stamping underneath. From the ruddy dust, a cloud builds up.  

“จงให้พวกเราสร้างมนุษย์ตามแบบฉายาของพวกเรา ตามอย่างพวกเรา” 

 I know the game they’re playing with a rope of rubber bands. You stretch the ends around two people and jump the pattern. I wish I could remember how to talk with them in thumping syllables, but my feet know what to do. I take off my shoes. When my heels skim the strands, a shimmer-shower of red. After a turn, the boy in the tree hands me a fruit shaped like a curled lampshade. I take it and eat. 

 และดูเถิด เป็นสิ่งที่ดียิ่งนัก 

Hear Kimberly recite the poem on the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast:

Kimberly Gibson-Tran is an emerging writer with over 40 published poems and essays—most within the last year. She studied linguistics at Baylor and the University of North Texas, writing critically, in her thesis, about poems with “Lines by Someone Else.” Her recent poems appear in Rust & Moth, Baltimore Review, Reed Magazine, Rowayat, and elsewhere. Raised by missionaries in Thailand, she now lives in Texas. Her first poetry manuscript is tentatively titled The Voyagers.