That rib Eve wove herself out of
arthritic in rain, foreign to the body's sanctum?
Serpent: curving rib cast-off—
scaly glitter and hoar—
dybbuk's uncoiled vertebrae,
flexuous maze of whorls?
Deaf, all snakes—
that rib exiled from body to body, silent,
—as even serpents' blood helix-wound
round veins, was not made to hear?
Prairie Schooner, Vol. 77, No. 3 (Fall 2003), p. 80
Valerie Wohlfeld's most recent book of poetry is Woman with Wing Removed (Truman State UP). Her first collection, Thinking the World Visible (Yale UP), won the Yale Younger Poets Prize. Publication of her work includes The New Yorker, The Hopkins Review, Yale Review, Antioch Review, Poetry Review (UK), Ploughshares, Poetry, The New Criterion, New England Review, and the Journal of the American Medical Association. Her poems have been nominated six times for a Pushcart Prize. She holds an MFA from Vermont College.