What was it she first saw
when she awoke on the hard ground?

The east wind blowing fig leaves, petals from
the garden, dust and pollen, a bee’s wing.

She must’ve unearthed her body
from itself. She must’ve named herself—

not Mother, not Eve, but after
the evening primrose, the wild gull.

She must’ve seen the man and his scarring, and knew
he looked nothing like God.

Yael Hacohen is a Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley. She has received research/teaching fellowships from Tel Aviv University and Bar Ilan University. She has an MFA in Poetry from New York University, where she was an ‎NYU Veterans Workshop Fellow, International Editor at Washington Square Literary ‎Review, and Editor-in-Chief at Nine Lines Literary Review. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in The Poetry Review, Ploughshares, The Missouri Review, Bellevue Literary Review, LIT, Prairie Schooner, New York Quarterly Magazine, Colorado Review, and many more. ‎Her chapbook “Between Sanctity and Sand” (Finishing Line Press, 2021) received praise from Yusef Komunyakaa, Edward Hirsch, Deborah Landau, and Craig Morgan Teicher. Her collection “The Dove That Didn’t Return” is set for publication with Holy Cow! Press in 2024.